Chelsea, the author?

So I'm going to write a book. I feel like right out of the gate, people are going to either roll their eyes or laugh. But that's okay, because I'm choosing to banish the fear. That little voice inside that squelches my excitement and passion and drive? Gone.As a child, I dreamt of writing the next great novel. I have a dirty, crumpled pile of partially-completed fictional novels sitting on my desk as we speak. I found them while going through some old boxes a few weeks ago and I can't quite bring myself to read more than a few lines without chuckling like a little schoolgirl. They're pretty terrible. Nicholas Sparks-esque, but much worse. At some point, I came to terms with the fact that I'm much more of a technical writer than a creative one, and I banished the dream that I could be an author to the dark depths of my brain. Then a few years ago, my sick little kid was born. He was healthy at birth, but as the weeks passed, it became clear that something wasn't quite right. We were sent to a specialist or two, bounced between doctors and eventually threw our hands up in defeat. I turned to food almost immediately, which was funny because up to that point, the most thought I'd ever given to food was whether I should eat a hamburger or some pizza. But for some reason, the allure of healing through nutrition came to me early on, and I've been on a long and winding journey ever since.I say winding because my faith in natural healing has waxed and waned. And life obstacles like pregnancy and side projects have sucked up my time and energy. Not to mention the financial aspect of it all, which, in a few panic-induced moments, led me to forgo healthy eating or products for the cheaper and unhealthier alternatives. As time went on and our family grew, our problems only multiplied. For most who know me or have read this blog, it's not news that we struggled with pretty extreme eczema along with a few other issues (like frequent migraine-like headaches and vomiting for Ben and digestive troubles and frequent diarrhea for all three). It was beyond health issues we could cope with. They impacted our daily living quite drastically, and ignoring them away was not even an option (though we initially did try!). I feel like God has been leading me on this journey...to this point...where everything came to a head and combined so beautifully (in a weird sense of the word). For the first time ever, my faith in our diet and lifestyle changes were so strong that I didn't revert to our old ways, as I'd done every time before for years on end, met with awful results. For the first time ever, also, our problems were so bad that I simply couldn't just give up. I suspect that all the waxing and waning was partially responsible for setbacks worse than our original problems. All my life, I've struggled with self-esteem issues just like most women. Unsure of my life's purpose, I felt direction-less so often. I suppose this is something that comes with age, but as I grew, as my faith deepened and as my children got older, I began to see things more clearly. I felt like my path was being etched out right before me, so clearly if only I had been looking. I think the gift God gave me was a fire inside. And a way to put that fire into words. I'm painfully wordy, I know. Probably because I enjoy writing so much, but also probably because I have no idea how to be short and to-the-point. While I think I'm a pretty decent technical writer, I know I'm no grammar perfectionist (and thanks to autocorrect, I'm no longer even capable of typing coherent sentences more than 50% of the time).  But those flaws aside (and with a good editor - anyone?), I believe in myself, and I believe that I'm good enough to give this authorship thing a try. My goal is not to be an award-winning author. It's not even to have a publisher or an agent. I'm not fooling myself, and I'm setting my standard pretty low here. Amazon and iTunes have made self-publishing a piece of cake (relatively speaking), so that's all I'm going for. I'm not trying to write the next literary masterpiece. Just a little piece of nonfiction with one goal: helping others. My path etched before my eyes has been one of healing. I've been on a quest to learn as much as I possibly can for years. This year, especially, I feel like I've learned so much I can truly fill a book, so I'm going to try. We found tremendous success, and even cooler than that? The journey my children went on has helped other kids just like them. Seeing that the tips and tools we used to heal my kids were used by others to heal their kids who were as bad, or even worse, than ours, is just indescribable. It truly makes everything we went through seem like it had a purpose. I had a nice little talk with a friend last night about God's healing role in our lives. He IS the healer, and I would be leaving out a huge part of our equation if he didn't get the credit. Sometimes it's so easy to focus on our own control that we completely forget that the one in ultimate control is God, and he is ultimately the only one capable of healing. I chewed on that conversation in my head all night, wondering how this could all peacefully coexist. If God is the ultimate healer, is it foolish to attempt a healing journey? Or should God be part of our healing journey, in combination with other tools? Would it be foolish to say, "God is the healer, so I'm just going to pray for him to heal me and if he doesn't, then it's not his will," without doing any work on my own? I'm in the latter camp. For us, I can't deny that God played a vital role in our journey because it was all so perfectly orchestrated. So often I cried out to God only to be met with another possible explanation, right before my eyes. I feel like God placed people in my life to encourage us to keep going. The timing was always so perfect. Just as I'd give up, someone new would speak into my heart and encourage me to keep going, to keep investigating, no matter how tiring and hopeless it all felt. And I believe deep in my soul that my passion and drive and my kids' affliction were paired together for a reason. I feel like my purpose is to use what I've learned - what God has surely lead me to - and my passion for it all, to educate others. My hubby and I had an awesome weekend alone, and on the way home from picking up our kiddos, I blurted all of this out. I've been wrestling with the idea for a month or two, but I needed his support. And because he's the awesome guy he is, he gave it to me fully. And he gave me the courage to go for it, too. He believes in me, and that is a gem to have.My biggest struggle, and one I'm not sure I'll ever be able to overcome, is the ability to share what I know in a way that reflects my heart. It's tough to share anything alternative without being slapped with a "judgmental" label. How does one communicate that her only purpose is that of helping and encouraging? There's such a fine line between sharing information and making someone feel lousy about their choices that it's hard to navigate the waters. But here's to trying!