FUN N' FUNERALS

Last week. One day we're at a huge reception celebrating a couple's 50th anniversary. The next day, literally, we're at a funeral grieving with the bereaved. It's roller-coaster emotions for us. Happiness. Sadness.

The life of a pastor and wife.

We feel the joys--and hurts--of our parishioners. We grieve with them, laugh with them, rejoice with them, cry with them, pray with them, love with them, as well as on them.

Got a call today that another one died. Another funeral. Saturday, it's back to celebrating. A 70th birthday cookout with a lot of fun and laughter with a large group of church people and friends.

When I was growing up, people used to say my grandmother had empathy. Nana called it "crawling into the skin of others and feeling what they're feeling."

I inherited that from her.

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Up and down emotions. In a small way, this is similar to the writing process. I create characters who experience hurt and love and joy and grief. I try and crawl into their skin and feel what they're feeling.

One of the highest compliments I've had from a reader was about this. The heroine in my historical novella in Sweet Liberty is an embittered former-slave-now-freewoman in the South in 1859. As I created her, I said, "Lord, let me crawl into Winkie's skin and feel what she's feeling. Let me know what her life as a slave has been like. Let me feel her bitterness...and her joy."

A reader wrote, "Are you black? Or do you just have a special gift of empathy?"

I said, "Thank You, Lord."