announcing ...

It's been a banner week.

I harvested the first batch of zucchini from our garden Tuesday. Turned them into sesame-studded zucchini bread and a pan of garlic-butter sauteed chiplets. So good.

Yesterday, Dave extracted the first jar of honey from our hives. We've waited all summer for that first taste of sweetness ... and it was worth the stingers, the heavy spacesuit, and the sticky mess on my kitchen counter after the spinning of the frames. Dave thinks we'll get about 60 pounds from the two hives. I'm already planning all the honey-sweetened baking I'll get to do over the fall and winter.

Something else happened this week. What was that .... oh yes! My second book was released. :)

I'll post the editorial review for Inconceivable : Finding Peace in the Midst of Infertility in a second, but I want to first say this: although the book is marketed toward those who have struggled with infertility, the lessons God taught me through this can be applied to any pain, any loss, any disappointment. The book chronicles my testimony--including my "wandering years" and all the misconceptions I carried about God--before recounting God's tenderness toward me in the midst of my anger and pain.

Here's the review from Amazon.com:

Women who are anxious to conceive—and who have yet to conceive—know about waiting. Waiting is the hallmark of infertility. You wait in doctors' offices. You wait to ovulate. You wait for prescriptions to be filled. You wait for the pregnancy test indicator to light up. You wait for a miracle, and then you wait again.

Inconceivable is the remarkable true-life story of Shannon Woodward—a woman who stopped waiting her life away. She wrote this book for other women who've been waiting—for women who can't afford the next round of medical treatments, who can't bear to let their feeble hopes rise again only to have them crash to the ground in disappointment.

Woodward revisits eighteen years of personal frustration, pain and anger. She speaks of healing, but not the kind that other women in her condition have prayed for. The healing she has experienced is the healing of walking another path—the path of peace that she is uniquely equipped to share.

So there you have it ... my banner week.