Emotions are a fickle thing, are they not? On the Friday before Labor Day, I danced a little jig of happiness: two paying jobs! A partial request!

The Tuesday after, quite serendipitously, I met the other agent who has a partial of my novel. We had a lovely conversation as I drove her to her hotel from a writer’s group I’m part of. She emailed me the next day and asked me to resend my partial. Woot! Another little jig.

But several more rejections have rolled in since then, including two for contests I’d entered earlier this year. I wrote in my journal last Monday night that I felt discouraged, as if I were writing in a vacuum: does anyone even read what I write? And I asked God for some validation. (What can I say? I have a short memory; it needs near constant reminders of God’s goodness.)

The next day, my friend Susan, who lives in Boston and to whom I’ve not talked in about a month, called me. “I read your blog this morning,” she said. “I liked it so much I posted a link on Facebook, and two of my friends responded–they both liked it, too.”

Well. It’s not a request for a full manuscript. It’s not an award or a grant or acceptance of an article submission. But it was the validation I’d asked for, manna enough to keep me writing for another day.

And then on Friday, three people posted comments on my blog–more manna in what sometimes seems a writing wilderness.

God is good.