For a long time I’ve dreamed of writing books.

The dream was real friends, and the passion intense. Sometimes, perhaps my expectations became a bit overwhelming. For everyone.

My husband knows this well.

I’d look at successful bloggers and published authors with a twinge of jealousy at their ability to accomplish what I certainly felt I was unable to do. Their online life was so put together, and me?

I was flying by the seat of my pants. 

In everything. For everything. Clearly I was lacking some writer-mom-super-heroesque-type-gene these women innately carried.

Until one after another, they started opening up about how they had help to do the things they did. They had nannies or housekeepers or just the incredible privilege of regular uninterrupted time to work.

And that little bit of jealousy, turned into lots of different excuses.

My kids are younger than theirs . . .

I can’t afford a housekeeper or a babysitter . . . 

My husband is in school and works several jobs . . .

We’re homeschooling . . .

So the dream sat. Longer than it should have.

Until one day I decided it was enough.

Enough jealousy. Enough excuses. Enough wanting to do something that no one was telling me not to. I decided to stop counting all the things I didn’t have, and do something with what I did.

In stolen moments throughout the last year this dream of mine started looking less like it was covered in someone else’s fairy dust, and more like it was full of plain old-fashioned hard work squeezed between the edges of real life.

I finally wrote my first book.

Nothing about this year has been easy and nothing has gone exactly as planned. There have been no magic book contracts that fell from the sky. No agents desperately searching for my phone number. There’s been no overnight success or instant gratification or microwaved publishing plan.

The proof of a realized dream sometimes looks like small, inconsequential, daily choices and way more mistakes than smooth sailing –

But it’s all been worth it.

I got the proof copy from CreateSpace for my new book Experience Christmas and I cried holding it in my hands. I have no idea who’s going to buy this book, or if I’ll make back the money we invested to produce it, but this book is real now.

It’s not just a dream.

It’s not just passion flailing it’s arms.

It has pages and chapters and a cover and my heart all wrapped inside.

It holds a message I’m so excited to share with people this Christmas – people I’m already praying for.

But to me it is also proof that dreams can come true despite real-life kind of odds.

I didn’t think a stay-at-home pregnant homeschooling mom could write and publish a book.

But I proved that girl wrong, and I’m so glad I did.