In May I went to a ladies retreat on the Oregon coast. It was a wonderful weekend that made me wish for some time with my friend Linda. I'd met Linda and her husband in 1995, shortly before I moved to Uganda, East Africa to join the mission team that they'd started. 15 years later, sitting in the chapel at a retreat, I was thinking about Shawn and Linda preparing to move back to the U.S. after 31 years as missionaries. The retreat speaker was great, but she didn't have a chance of keeping my attention as phrases started running through my mind about transitioning back to life in America. Then the phrases began to rhyme, and soon they had become a Dr. Seuss inspired story just begging to be written.
At first my plan was just to write a fun story that I could share with Shawn and Linda, and then I began to doodle pictures. One picture led to another, and what's a picture without color? As much as I love color, I love color with texture more... You get the idea.
From the first phrases running through my mind until I held a copy of "This Is Not My Home" was about four months. Though I wasn't sure I'd pull it together, it was worth it when I got to give Shawn and Linda a copy of their book and welcome them "home."
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