Life Happens Once Again. It Must Be November.

It seems to be an inevitable happenstance of NaNoWriMo that whenever I really start making headway on my novel, Life Happens in such a way that I'm forced to do a major priority shift for the rest of the month. On Tuesday evening my mom-in-law called to let us know that she'd got up that morning to find her husband (Matt's step-dad) lying unconscious in the hallway and had him rushed to the hospital after she couldn't wake him up. He'd apparently collapsed from a combo of extremely low electrolytes and extremely high blood sugar (he's diabetic), and was suffering kidney failure and respiratory failure. He's been in ICU in an induced coma and hooked up to a ventilator ever since. His blood chemistry is improving, though, so his doctors are optimistic that he'll pull through. We're remaining hopeful and doing our best to trust that whatever happens, God is in control of the situation.

I feel terrible for my MIL right now. Her husband is disabled (he has emphysema on top of diabetes and is tethered to an oxygen tank at all times) and highly dependent on her, but she's been out of work for the last six months or so. They're struggling to make ends meet, and the only insurance they currently have is the limited Medicaid coverage he gets. So to help keep a roof over their heads, they've been basically living on ramen noodles and cutting back on both of their medications. So I know she's feeling at least partially responsible, even though she was just doing the best she could in a crappy situation.

Matt and I had no idea how badly off they were, because she doesn't want to worry us. But now that we know we're going to do everything we can to make sure they have healthy food to eat and can take all of their meds. It won't be that easy for us, either, since we're not exactly overflowing with disposable income, but this is just more opportunity to trust in the Lord's provision--something I've gotten pretty good at over the last couple of years.

I've been keeping my head down (read: staying off of Twitter and other fun parts of the Internet) all week, trying to get on top of my work after several projects all heated up at once toward the end of last week. I'm pretty well caught up, but I'm going to stay in head-down mode today to get ahead so I can take a long weekend to focus on my in-laws.

As for NaNoWriMo, so far I've managed to keep up my word count (not that you'd know it by the yellow boxes on that widget in the previous post--apparently it only lights up green if you actually write 1,667 words that day, regardless of whether your overall word count is ahead of where it should be), and I'm going to do my best to keep it up. Of course it's fallen a few notches on the priority list right now, but to keep writing diligently through a crisis is a skill I badly need to learn. Normally, the slightest crisis or upheaval makes me throw up my hands and banish writing to the back burner, a practice that's not going to serve me if I ever want to have a career in writing fiction.

At any rate, if you are the praying sort and could remember my in-laws in your prayers, both they and we will really appreciate it.