An Unexpected Journey

with guest Sherrinda Ketchersid

I don’t know about you, but life can get complicated. You think you are on a smooth path, and then a storm hits, throwing a huge tree across the road. What do you do? Climb over it? Go around it? Chop your way through the tree branches? There are different ways to get around your obstacles and choosing the right one can seem overwhelming.

You might choose one way around the hardship, only to find another one just around the bend. You wonder if another way would have been easier. Maybe. Maybe not. We can’t know. We pray for direction, then take the path we feel God is leading us toward. We trust that He is leading us toward the best path for us—even if it has another obstacle along the way. And to be honest, there will be more obstacles.

That’s the thing about life. There’s good and bad all the time. It’s a roller coaster. An adventure. A journey of anticipation and expectation. We know to expect difficulty at some point, yet when it hits it sometimes blows us out of the water. We want to keep traveling on the smooth path. The one with untold blessings.

Let me just say, there are blessings on the difficult path too. What??? Yes, you heard me. Blessings! You are blessed when you reach out to God for help and direction. You are blessed when a friend calls or sends a card to encourage you. You are blessed when you learn to praise God during the turmoil. You are blessed when your tough experiences enable you to help someone else. There are multiple blessings for the hard journey.

The same rings true for the characters we create in our stories. We know there is no real story without conflict, so our characters must face hardship during the plot points you have laid out. They must decide how they will handle the conflict and move past it. Will they encounter more hardship because of their decisions? (Of course! It’s a novel!)

But will your characters find unexpected blessing along the way? Will they recognize the good in the midst of the bad? I don’t know. It depends on the character and their journey. It depends on you, the writer. What kinds of journey will your character take? Will the road him lead to self-discovery? Will the road lead him to God? Or will the road lead him to despair? These are choices you and your character must make.

In my debut novel, Lord of Her Heart, both my hero and heroine face twists and turns along their journey. My heroine, Jocelyn, flees the convent where she was receiving an education when she hears she is being forced to take her vows or marry an overbearing man. She disguises as a boy and tries to get home to see why she is being forced into what she feels is bondage. She faces dangers and complications on this journey, but finds a sweet blessing in getting to know the knight who saves her. She finds love. She finds someone she can trust in the end. Best of all, she finds she can trust God throughout her difficult journey.

Nothing in this post is new, but it’s something I like to remind myself every so often. Not only for my journey, but for my characters as well.

What kind of hardship or obstacles have you given your character in your current work-in-progress? Do they ever find the blessing in the midst of the problems?  What books have you read where the characters find blessing in the midst of hardship? Or what book’s character had the most hardships to endure?

Sherrinda is giving away an ecopy of Lord of Her Heart. Leave a comment and check out the WE on Saturday -- maybe it will be yours when it releases on May 14!!

Lord of Her Heart

He’s fighting for his future—she’s running for her life.

Lady Jocelyn Ashburne suspects something is amiss at her family’s castle 
because her father ceases to write to her. When she overhears a plot to 
force her into vows—either to the church or a husband—she disguises 
herself and flees the convent in desperation to discover the truth.

Malcolm Castillon of Berkham is determined to win the next tournament 
and be granted a manor of his own. After years of proving his worth on 
the jousting field, he yearns for a life of peace. Rescuing a scrawny 
lad who turns out to be a beautiful woman is not what he bargained for. 
Still, he cannot deny that she stirs his heart like no other, in spite 
of her conniving ways.

Chaos, deception, and treachery threaten their goals, but both are 
determined to succeed. Learning to trust each other might be the only 
way either of them survives.

Sherrinda Ketchersid is a lover of stories with happily-ever-after endings. Whether set in the past or present, romance is what she writes and where her dreams reside. Sherrinda lives in north-central Texas with her preacher husband. With four grown children, three guys and a gal, she has more time and energy to spin tales of faith, fun, and forever love.

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