I have done everything I know to do and now I’m asking for your help. I started an online fundraiser, Keep Cody at Home, that is accepting donations until July 22, 2012. Even the smallest donation is helpful and greatly appreciated.

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Even if you cannot help in these two ways, it would be very helpful if you could pass this information on to everyone you know and post it on social media sites.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. You are appreciated.

That night was hard, but Friday night, two nights later, was even harder. I could not sleep and as I lay in bed I thought about all of the things I didn’t do that I should have done.

I should have held her more, I thought. I should have stayed with her at the hospital every night.

“It was too short,” I kept saying to David as I cried. “It was too short.”

The following Sunday, I went to church for the first time in a long time. It was a non-traditional church where people believe things like karma and reincarnation—and Jesus, too.

I liked it a lot.

During the service, I cried a little. Then, after the service, I prayed with someone and cried a lot more. The minister saw me and came over to talk. I told her what happened and said through my tears, “I want to know where she is.”

“Why do you ask that?” she said. “Why is it so important for you to know?”

“I don’t want to believe she’s in heaven,” I said. “I don’t think she is. I think she is still with me.”

The minister said that she believed I could be right; Jane could still be here.

“I don’t believe in heaven,” she said. “I believe that those that pass on are still with us, but they’re on a different level, one that we can’t see right now.”

“Can I talk to her, then?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “You can talk to her, even out loud, and I think she will hear you.”

That helped . . .

. . . And that, my friend, is the story of what I learned from Jane.

Now, I still don’t have a religion. I probably never will again. But I have something else, and it is, as I said before, something big.

Something much bigger than any one thing can be on its own.

I feel more now. I love people more. But more important than all that: I have, once again, learned to expect miracles.

I don’t know what the miracles will be, of course. Right now, I don’t even have a guess. But I am going somewhere that I wasn’t going before, and my life is larger than it used to be: larger than my own happiness and larger, even, than the happiness I can bring to others.

It is as large as my soul.

Of course, I am not always full of faith, even now.

The truth is, I only have this kind of faith part of the time. The rest of the time, there is nothing—only emptiness, and when I see Jane’s picture, I just see what could have been, not what is, still, somewhere, wanting me and waiting for me to be with her again.

The truth is, most of the time I have very little faith or none at all.

But I want more.

Maybe someday I will have it.

Maybe that will be my miracle.

To read true stories every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m. about how the law of attraction and spirituality changes people’s lives, visit Player’s blog at www.storiesandtruth.com.

One of the most thought-provoking questions for me was, “If this were true, would you behave any differently?” To put it into perspective, one example where this question was asked was in the discussion of the existence of an afterlife. Taylor gives several different sides of the afterlife debate, and at the end of each he asks if you would behave any differently if that particular belief was true.

What Taylor does so well is to show that there really is no certainty in the beliefs that we hold. A belief we may cling to for years can one day be completely obliterated in favor of a new belief based on knowledge we have gained. Taylor goes through much of why we believe what we believe and the manipulation that takes place in order to get us to believe one way or another. He suggests that, rather than ever taking someone’s word for something, we investigate it ourselves and come to our own conclusion based on the facts, not propaganda. I have seen this in my own life. Just in the last seven years my life has changed dramatically – mostly from personal experience and exposure to things I thought I understood but did not. My beliefs are unrecognizable in comparison to the beliefs I held seven years ago.

What If? is a challenging book, and one that will leave many of us feeling unsettled – in a good way. Through the emotions that Taylor’s questioning evokes, we learn where we hold rigid beliefs and in turn where to begin to open our mind to other possibilities. Taylor doesn’t give answers to the questions he posits, though he does offer some personal opinions in some of the scenarios. His purpose for writing What If? is to get us to answer the questions for ourselves so we can better understand who we are and why. Many of us are mindlessly walking through life as followers and never quite understand the underlying reasons why we believe what we do. If we were challenged on our beliefs, many of us would be hard-pressed to come up with a fact-based, non-emotional response to our challenger. What If? is a great way to start on the journey towards self-awareness so that we can better understand ourselves, speak confidently about what we believe and why we believe it, and take action based on those beliefs rather than standing on the sidelines waiting for someone else to do it.

One last question from Taylor to leave you with: “What was your last truly original thought?”

Jackie After O is so important in helping us understand that what we see in the headlines and how we perceive others to be is not always true. Those thrust into the spotlight often take on a public persona that shields their own vulnerabilities and perceived flaws. The most haunting example of this is the photos Cassidy provides us. In nearly every photo, Jackie has on her picture-perfect-plastic smile for the cameras even though many of them were taken when she was experiencing unimaginable devastation in her life. What Cassidy captures so well is the humanness behind the iconic figure that Jackie was. Jackie made mistakes, as well all do, but her mistakes were paraded in front of her and in front of the entire world. And yet, she continued to improve herself despite the ridicule she faced; she continued to evolve as a woman in an era when women were not supposed to aspire to anything beyond being good wives and mothers; and she continued to make the best of every situation in which she found herself. Jackie was a woman of action and we can all learn from her bravery and courage in the face of life experiences many of us will never endure.

Bloom is so much more than just Hampton’s experience learning that her daughter has Down syndrome. It is a testament to the miraculous healing power of family, friendships, women, and forgiveness – not just forgiving others, but forgiving ourselves as well. When I started reading, I thought this was another memoir that sugar-coated the process that a mother goes through when they find out their child has a special need. Being a mother with a child on the autism spectrum, I needed to see how someone else handled learning their child has special needs and how they came to terms with it. I needed the good, but I also needed the downright ugly. It was so refreshing to see that in Bloom. Oftentimes, when I read a memoir that only highlights the rainbows and butterflies and skips over the tornadoes and hurricanes, I feel like a horrible person, like somehow I should be able to make every day full of rainbows and butterflies. I needed to read something I could relate to, something that showed what it’s really like to find out your child is different from what you had expected and Bloom filled that need. I love the authenticity Kelle Hampton exemplifies; the courage she shows through her willingness to bring us fully into the ugly. It is ugly, this awakening. It is an awakening to our own selfishness in our expectations for others and our prejudices towards those we don’t perceive as perfect. It is an awakening to just how much we define ourselves by what other’s think of us and it brings us to a place where we question our beliefs about ourselves, our world, and God. As we see in Bloom, though, the beauty far outweighs the ugliness, and if we choose to let it, that beauty can transform the ugly from a raging wildfire into a tiny flicker.

Bloom spans the first year of Nella’s life and I love how Hampton shows that the fears, the questions, and the journey itself, does not stop just because we’ve learned to accept what we have been given. It continues and the ugliness can creep back in if we do not make a conscious choice each day to keep it at bay by focusing on the good that surrounds us no matter how small. Hampton’s journey to find the beauty in the unexpected and her truth on how she got to that point will help so many others start searching for and find the beauty hidden in the ugliness of their situations too.

Hampton addresses in Bloom how her positive outlook about Nella’s diagnosis caused uproar with some of her blog readers. She was told that she was in denial and to wait until Nella got older and her services ran out and she’d have to fight to get the care her daughter needs. Then she would fully understand the awfulness of her situation. I am there now, and yes, it is hell, but I don’t believe keeping a positive attitude about your situation is ever a bad thing. It is beneficial to warn others what might be up ahead, but not beneficial to scold them for enjoying the time they have right now. I think it is wonderful that Hampton has the blessed opportunity to enjoy her daughter at a time when every need she has is being met and that she has the mindset to enjoy it instead of focusing on what might happen years from now. It is one thing to be prepared for what might happen and quite another to be so worried about it that you don’t enjoy what is happening right now.

This is a wonderful book for anyone who is facing a crisis that has led them to question everything they thought they knew about themselves and about life. It is an uplifting, transformative memoir. We are witnesses to the shattering of Hampton’s tough outer shell in the midst of tremendous heartbreak and the emergence of her true, authentic, beautiful self that had been patiently waiting for the right moment to be revealed.

John B. Carnett, in his brief essay “Birth,” discusses the moment he realized he was using his camera as a buffer between himself and the life unfolding in front of him. It brings forth the question: What do we use as a buffer to distance ourselves from what is happening around us? This might seem odd, but sometimes I feel like my glasses provide a buffer between me and others.

Diane Ackerman has a beautiful essay entitled “Love in a Time of Illness” about her husband’s stroke and his slow recovery and the skills he developed to compensate for what he’d lost. It is heartbreaking and at the same time so hopeful and inspiring.

In “Momento Mori,” Adam Theron-Lee Rensch takes us on a haunting journey into how he believes he accidentally killed his father by rearranging the furniture in his father’s apartment in an attempt to keep his father from getting hurt should he wake up drunk and fall.

Another haunting essay is “Forgiven” by Jennifer Thompson. In the essay, Thompson takes us through her experience watching a man be convicted of her rape, finding out eleven years later that he is innocent, and the beautiful aftermath of what should have been an unthinkably horrific experience.

These are only a few brief descriptions of what you will encounter in The Moment. It is a book that will have you reflecting on your own life and the moments you’ve experienced that changed everything and will serve as a reminder that even the worst of experiences can turn out better than you ever expected.

I like how Nick Arvin uses dialogue as a teaching tool for the reader on the difficult subject of accident reconstruction. Arvin is able to help the reader understand the intricacies that go along with trying to find out exactly what happened in an accident. For example, Ellis explains the process of crush energy to a lawyer he is working for on a particular accident. Through explaining to another character how the different processes work, the reader is better able to understand as well.

I also like how the character, Ellis, notices minute details everywhere he goes such as skid marks on the road even when it doesn’t pertain to his work. His work has become a part of him even in his off time. However, the novel overall has too many details. They are often list like, unnecessary to the story, and become a major distraction. The use of so much detail also slows the pace of the novel and takes away from the impact it could have on the reader. I found myself skipping over paragraphs that were laden with unnecessary details.

Something else that was problematic for me with the novel was the character development. None of the characters felt real to me. The dialogue seemed forced and unrealistic. The emotions seemed muted in places where emotions should be running high and running high in situations that would not call for an emotional response. Instead of feeling like I was part of the story as it unfolded, I felt like I was being told the story. I did not feel empathetic towards the characters and was not invested enough in them. I believe the overabundance of details contributed to this. Instead of getting pertinent details on the characters interiority, the reader is given details on what a town looks like, what stores are in the town, what a character bought at a store. For example, on page 187, Ellis walks into a hotel room and we get this description:

He stepped into the room and frigid air gripped him; mounted into the opposite wall was a roaring air-conditioner unit. Next to it stood a sliding glass door onto the balcony. A watery green-and-blue wallpaper flowed from the ceiling to a plum-colored carpet bearing a history of spills and heels. A bed covered by a polyester blanket, two wooden side tables, a dresser, a desk, and two hardback desk chairs crowded against one another. On the dresser stood a TV, and over the bed hung a little framed picture of a jumping swordfish – it looked as if it had been cut from a magazine.

This would be fine if it happened intermittently throughout the novel, but this kind of detail occurs again and again. It would be better if the details were given through some sort of character action rather than given in list-like fashion as above.

Another issue that contributed to the lack of connection with the characters was the behaviors of the characters that were not consistent with what we knew of them. For example, Ellis is involved in an accident that severely disables him emotionally and psychologically. He replays this accident when he drives and it causes a lot of anxiety for him. However, right after he starts driving again, he goes to a bar, drinks, even mentions the effect of the alcohol because he hasn’t eaten all day, and then proceeds to get into his van and drive! It seems unbelievable to me that someone as anxiety-ridden about accidents (including the one he was just in) as Ellis, who also works as an accident reconstructionist, would get drunk and drive. There are other inconsistencies with the characters that I don’t want to mention so I don’t give too much information about the content of the novel to those who have not read it yet, but they are problematic to the suspension of disbelief necessary in a novel.

I liked the subject matter of the novel. Accident reconstruction is a topic that is fascinating, but that little of us know about. There were great details given at different accident scenes and I would have liked to see more of those details included. I liked how the search for Boggs included Ellis revisiting different accidents scenes they had worked on together and how they tried to make logical sense out of something that seems so random. I think these scenes could have been developed even further and, as such, they would have had a bigger impact on the reader and brought forth the larger question of what accidents mean to us. Why do they occur? Are they just random occurrences or is someone always at fault? Are we truly just at the wrong place at the wrong time or is there a larger force at play in our lives? These are the questions that many of us struggle with, especially those of us who have had our lives completely transformed in an instant by an accident whether for the better or for the worse.

Tonight, because money is quickly running out, I had to sell most of my book collection. As I sat looking at my books, I felt such a sense of loss, not just because I was having to part with items that have sustained me for so many years, but also because I realized how long it has been since I picked up a book for pleasure or wrote a word that wasn’t for a grocery or to-do list. As I began to sort through them, my heart ached. I wanted to read each and every one of them.

How could I let them go?

I started with the books I didn’t feel an emotional attachment to and then those I had begun to read, set down for some reason, and never picked back up. That was fairly easy, but it wasn’t enough. I have an hour drive each way to visit my son every week. On the weekends he comes home to visit, I have to drive a total of four hours. Gas is not cheap and I have been unable to work full-time for several years because of the toll the tumor was taking on my body before it was finally discovered. As I sat staring at the books that were left, I felt intense anxiety and had to take a break.

Why are these books so important to me? Why am I having such a hard time letting them go?

The answer came to me. Books have been there for me when no one else was there. Books have allowed me to escape a sometimes unbearable life. I have looked to books to tell me how to live, how to behave, and how to better myself and my life. Somewhere along the way I became dependent on them instead of on myself. I believed that somewhere within those books was the answer to all my problems. If I could just read this book or that book I would finally find what I have been looking for all my life. But the reality is, most of the books have been collecting dust on the shelves for years not ever having been opened. Most importantly, I have been reading books and even using the idea of reading books to avoid sitting down and actually writing one.

I went back and started pulling books off the shelves and putting them in bins. I allowed myself one small shelf for each genre I enjoy: writing advice, self-help, fiction, and memoir. If I had more than would fit on the shelf, they had to go. After filling the bins, I immediately left for Half Price Books to sell them. I knew if I didn’t, I would start to go through the bins and pull books out.

Driving the 45 minutes there and back, I had time to reflect on the process of letting go I was experiencing and surprisingly felt relief. I realized that the books I decided to keep have helped define more clearly who I am and who I want to be as a writer. I have been struggling to figure out what kind of book I want to write. Letting go of my books gave me the answer. Through their loss, they finally gave me what I had so desperately been seeking: a better understanding of who I am as a writer and to start writing again.