Prologue
The official publication date of “Sacred Heart Attack | Sacrée Crise Cardiaque” (WestBow Press, 2013) was July 15, 2013. The book chronicled my experience of surviving a major heart attack while visiting Montreal, QC., Canada in January of 2013.
I had written the 108-page book over a two-month period while recovering from the heart event and beginning my cardiac rehabilitation. About the same time, I finished another manuscript I had worked on for a couple of years. And “Heart Journey: Following Jesus to the Heart of God” (WestBow Press, 2013) was published in September. It seemed that my heart attack had been a catalyst to more seriously listen to God’s call to me to write about my experience of God in everyday life.
Consequently, I began working on other ideas for books that I had mused about over the years. I was interested in writing on solitude and I had always had an idea to write a novel on my experience in the computer software business in the 1980s and 1990s. Those writing projects were a bit uninspired for me and were moving slowly.
The cost of my heart attack had been significant. First, I had strict orders from my Canadian and American doctors not to work for 30 days. This hampered my consulting work in a significant way and by May, two of my three clients did not renew their contracts with me.
Over the summer, I was immersed in publishing both of my books and decided to do a kickstarter project to help with funding. These were eventually successful projects, but took a great deal of my time and energy to accomplish. It was, then, not a huge surprise on Tuesday night August, 27, 2013, that I said to God, “My life is painful right now.”
What was a surprise was God’s reply, “Why aren’t you writing about it?”
Wow. I knew exactly what he meant. The reason that so many of my friends and family had responded positively to my short essays about my heart attack that formed the basis of the book “Sacred Heart Attack” was the personal nature of my sharing with which they identified. Many have commented that they felt like I was sitting beside them telling a story. They felt my presence in my writing.
And some readers had begun to ask me how I was doing now and was I going to write any more. The bottom line for me was that my best writing was from my own experiences. My ability to be open and honest about my experience of life and God was relatable to others.
So, the next morning I started writing this story and words flowed. I felt in the “sacred zone” again. That’s where this book came from – a midnight encounter with the Spirit of Love reminding me of my calling.
