Who's in Your Path?

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Have you ever thought about the people you come across on a daily basis, or even those that seem to be chance encounters? I’ve thought about this a great deal lately—mostly in regards to this writing journey I’ve been on since 2014.

One of the main influences upon me back then, and even today, is my sister Bobbie. She’s been a big influence upon my life since the day I was born, but for the majority of my life, I wasn’t aware of just how significant a role she played. I knew she was my big sister and that she loved me and I loved her, but I was a kid, a teen, a young married woman, then a busy mother raising four sons. Who had time to think about the things she may or may not have been pouring into me?

Half-Baked Beats Blown to Bits

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

One thing about me that most people don’t know is that I have a super-sensitive nose. That’s right, I’ve been gifted with the nose of a blood hound.

To prove my point, here is a short story. Our youngest son and I were walking through a mall in Florida one day. We were coming from one end, exiting through one of the big anchors, level two, into the promenade inside the mall. I told my son that I smelled spearmint and that someone nearby was chewing spearmint gum. Now, we all know that very distinctive odor. You probably don’t smell it as I do, but you are familiar with it.

We made our way down the storefronts and the aroma grew stronger. Son, didn’t smell it. Yet. We make our way to the other end of the mall and took the escalator to the bottom floor. Now, the smell was almost overpowering. At the bottom of the escalator, on the first floor, all the way on the opposite end of the mall, stood a woman taking one of those familiar surveys. She was smacking away on none other than spearmint gum. And this is just one such story of which there are too many to count.

At the End of Your Rope?

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

Have you ever felt that you were at the end of your rope? I think most of us have. Sometimes life just throws so much at us that it’s hard to cope. We don’t know if the decisions we’ve made are the right ones, friends betray us, people say hurtful, cruel things to us or about us. The ones we thought would always be there either leave this world or they simply abandon us for one reason or another.

When I saw the man up in the tree in our back yard, I had to walk away. See, I’m deathly afraid of heights—Acrophobia. I have a case of that big time. I don’t do well on even a short step ladder. Forget the eight-foot one out in our garage. Nope. That little beauty is my husband’s domain.

We recently moved into our condo here in North Carolina. The actual move-in was at the end of January, but we weren’t really living here until the beginning of May. In January, there were no leaves on the trees outside our rear windows. We had a fairly unobstructed view of the golf course that lies beyond our boundary.

Voices of the Past

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

The Headstone of my GGG Grandparents

Y’all know that I’m into charting the genealogies of my family. I’ve been working on some lines for as long as twenty years, maybe even more. With a few, I got lucky, or rather, blessed. There were people who did the foot work long before I became interested. And when I say foot work, I mean literal walking through courthouses, libraries, and cemeteries, not to mention, vacant fields where old homesteads once sat. I imagine they spent hours rummaging through dusty, old documents in search of that one paper that would tell them this is who you are.

Have You Done Your Homework?

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

That may seem an odd question to ask as school draws to a close for the summer. For many, this is just the start of a very busy season. Just because school is out doesn’t mean the work ends. I’m talking about for writers.

This time last week I was busy running around the hills and up and down the stairs on the campus at the Ridgecrest Conference Center in Black Mountain, North Carolina. I was there with my sister for the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference. This is a fabulous conference for those of you who may have any kind of interest or a calling to write. It is run by Edie Melson and DiAnn Mills, two outstanding authors and all-around fabulous women. Each of these ladies has the heart of a teacher.

BRMCWC 
BRMCWC, as the conference is called by many, is a full four days of learning the craft of writing from the very best teachers in the industry. If you go to this site https://www.blueridgeconference.com/  you will be able to read all about the faculty for this year. Delve deeper and you will find classes they taught. It is an intense week filled with not only learning opportunities, but appointments with agents, editors, and publishers, and just about anyone associated with the publishing industry. We also have a time of worship each morning and each evening followed by keynotes from member of the faculty.

Making Tough Decisions

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

I’ve recently had to make a pretty big decision. It was big to me, although in the scope of my entire life, it would seem inconsequential. I actually struggled for weeks with this. I declined something I thought I was being called to do. But when I look back, this decision had been there all along.

When this opportunity first presented itself, I was gung ho. But in the back of my mind I was hearing, wait, the timing isn’t right.  But I didn’t heed that voice. I just went headlong and even talked about it with enthusiasm. All the while, that Voice was imploring me to wait. (Psalm 27:14)

Family Reunion: Making Memories

By Debra DuPree Williams @DDuPreeWilliams

We’ve recently had my husband’s two sisters and their husbands visiting. Sue, the younger of the two, and her husband Bill live in Athens, Greece, and we don’t see them very often. Kay and her husband Randy live in Birmingham and they’ve come several times since we’ve lived in North Carolina. It’s been five years since the three siblings were together.

One thing families always seem to do is reminisce about the olden days. We are no exception.  They talked about people and places they all remember from their childhoods. I’ve heard these stories so often after almost forty-five years of being married to the baby of the family, that I know many of the people and places, too. And it doesn’t hurt that my husband’s mother grew up in my hometown. We graduated from Andalusia High School, twenty-eight years apart.