With my two furry sidekicks at my heels, I stepped outside, placed my cup of tea on the table, sat down with a book and pencil in hand, and took a deep breath. Finally, I could enjoy a little peace and quiet.
The end of May didn’t turn out like expected. What was supposed to be a minor repair to our second-story porch’s rubber roof turned into a multi-day, and much more expensive, endeavor. Evidently, the railing was installed incorrectly when the house was built, resulting in wood rot and water leakage.
While the workers were here, I spent my days confined to one room trying to keep our dogs calm. They were not pleased at all with the loud noise or the strangers outside the window. I used the time, and the days that followed, to create a new puzzle book. This is the book I had in my hands when I stepped outside, the first printed copy from Amazon.
Knowing this book contained some of my favorite encouraging Bible verses, I was eager to get started. My plan was to work through one puzzle a day, savoring them and meditating on the scripture as I went. I opened to the first scripture, 2 Chronicles 15:7: “Be ye strong therefore, and let not your hands be weak: for your work shall be rewarded.”
All was going well. Embracing the relaxing activity, I purposely took my time finding the words. Suddenly, it became more challenging when I couldn’t find “be weak.” I carefully scanned all the letters in the puzzle. Uh oh. I turned to the solutions and soon realized that “be” and “weak” were there, but not together. I had made a mistake on the very first puzzle in the book! Ugh! The irony of the words didn’t escape me. I felt weak.
Since I used two different software programs to create the book, I must have changed the word list in one and not the other. I thought I had been careful, but now I wondered if there were other mistakes. The only way to check was to go through the entire book again. Leaving the mistake on the first puzzle, and possibly others, was not an option.
Having said goodbye to my quiet time, I spent the next few hours poring over the book, searching for mistakes. I’d like to say I didn’t find any others but I found a few, fixed them, and uploaded the corrected book. The fabulous thing about print-on-demand in this digital age is that you can make corrections. Once you upload a new version, that’s what gets printed. Since I made the corrections before selling any copies, no one will get the messed up version.
Now you might look at this situation and think what a blessing it was that you found those mistakes before anyone bought the book. If that was your thought, I envy you. My mind did not go there. Instead, I wasted several days feeling discouraged and defeated.
It wasn’t until I read a daily devotional about forgetting God’s faithfulness that I realized how I had missed the blessing. Yeah, I messed up, but God intervened. Imagine what would have happened if I didn’t find the errors. Someone could have bought the book, been frustrated with the first puzzle, irritated by the other mistakes, and could have lost confidence in my books. This person may have written a negative review and caused others not to purchase it. Then no one would be encouraged from the scripture within it. That would have been a real disaster. Finding the mistakes was a huge blessing!
It’s not always easy to avoid negativity when difficulties arise, but I encourage you to try. Don’t do what I did. Challenges may actually be blessings in disguise.
And by the way, if you find errors in my books please let me know so I can fix them! If you want to learn more about my puzzle books, you can find them here.
