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Gina DiMartino

~ An Asheville Foodie, Writer, Creator & Dreamer

Gina DiMartino

Tag Archives: Pain & Suffering

a hero?

11 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by ginamd in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

author, book proposal, boston bombing, Boston Marathon, healing, hero, Pain & Suffering, publisher, publishing, suffering, writing a book

I am writing my book proposal. I know. I always say that. But this time for real. It’s been written. And re written. And re written again. So yeah, I’m re writing it. I’m sure not for the last time. Something I just read said that your book proposal should present your topic, describe an urgent gap in the topic and then introduce the author as the hero who will be able to fill that gap. I feel ultimately deflated and not able to be that hero. Obviously I don’t think of myself as any expert on any subject, let alone the subject of suffering. But I have to write this proposal suggesting myself as the hero who can fill a gap in this subject area?

My book is the heroic document that will solve the worlds suffering problem and bring healing to the masses.

Yeah right.

Surely that is not what is expected of me.

The real reason I started writing was selfishly only for myself. For my healing. I think it was very profitable. I explored my story. My feelings. I wrote them down and I was able to look at all the events and explore them all to see how those things were affecting my life. This four-year journey has been weird. And has had lots of ups and downs. I know that I have learned a lot of things. Most of them I still can’t even put into words. But I don’t think I am the hero.

I don’t know how to sell myself or sell my book to a publisher as someone who is filling a gap. Let alone the only one who is able to fill that gap. I know that there are gaps. I know that there are people suffering. Who feel like they are alone. And I think that is my main objective. To just put it out there and say hey I went through this, and I went through suffering and its maybe not the same as yours, but I felt it and I know kinda what you are feeling and there are lots of other people feeling it too and you aren’t alone! You are not alone!

But is that heroic?

I went to get special orthotics the other day. Like an old person. I know. LAME. The man fitting me for the orthotics was a double amputee. He lost his legs in a car accident. He asked for my story to get a better idea of what was going on with my foot and as I shared with him he was amazed. He walked me around the place introducing me to other workers exclaiming loudly that I was in a bomb and that I was a hero. I don’t know how being in a bomb makes me a hero. It’s not like I did it intentionally. Or saved anyone else’s life. I was in a bomb and I lived. But to me that isn’t heroic. It’s just stupid. Wrong place, wrong time. I survived. Which is good I guess. But where do heroics come into that?

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about that. How he kept telling me I was a hero. And I talk to my boss, a retired marine, who was in bombs but in defending and protecting our country. And I think he is a hero. But not me. He put himself in harm’s way to protect us. That is heroic.

A hero is defined as: “a person noted for courageous acts or nobility of character;
a person who, in the opinion of others, has special achievements, abilities, or personal qualities and is regarded as a role model or ideal; or the principal character in a story, play, film, etc. (dictionary.com) I certainly don’t feel like I had any courageous acts or nobility. But I would love to be distinguished as a role model and in the story of my life, that I am writing, I am the principal character.

So in this day, in this weird space, I am trying to figure out if I am a hero. And how to best present myself in that light even thought I don’t believe it about myself. Because I want this publisher to see me that way. I want him to be desperate to publish my book. But am I asking him to believe something about me that I don’t believe about myself. And do I need to believe it in order for it to indeed be true or is it a “fake it till you make it” situation? Am I the only one who can fill this gap? Am I the only one who can talk about suffering and how to get through it and how to learn from it and how to put God in the middle of it as the only means of actually making sense of it? No. Other people can do that. But I am the only one who can tell this story. And so, I am going to be this hero. And I am going back to writing my proposal. To convince the publisher that I am the hero worth having.

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The goal is to please God

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by ginamd in Uncategorized

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Tags

Heaven, Longing for heaven, Narnia, Pain & Suffering

I just read the last Narnia book, The Last Battle. I usually read all those books every year, and I just love the last one when they finally all get to “heaven” and get to stay with Aslan forever. This time it just really made me sad. I think since the bombing, since I am in so much constant pain, I am SO ready to get to heaven. I was jealous of all the Narnians being able to finally get to the New Narnia! What a wonderful day that will be! 

“And of course it is different; as different as a real thing is from a shadow or as waking life is from a dream…Its as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking glass. And the sea in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real ones; yet at the same time they were somehow different – deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story; in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed, and then cried: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this!” “Isn’t it wonderful?” said Lucy. “Have you noticed one can’t feel afraid, even if one wants to? Try it.”
And then she forgot everything else, because Aslan himself was coming…

He said  “The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended; this is the morning.”

Lucky people! “The dream is ended; this is the morning.” How beautiful! I just didn’t know what to do with this sadness and desire, and i found myself thinking, what would David tell me I should do when I’m feeling like this? And what came to mind was “If the goal of your life is to please God, what do you need to do right now?” (Equip classes have brainwashed me 😉 And I thought, sure that’s good, please God…but there’s got to be a better answer.

What did people in the bible do when they were longing for heaven? So I started looking up verses. And I read a bunch and finally came to 2 Corinthians 5:8-9 “We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So we make it our goal to please him…”

And I put down my bible and said “UGH!” out loud. Haha. All that digging and searching for verses and it comes right back to David’s quote…”If the goal of your life is to please God, what do you need to do right now?” I love that I can dig and dig and still come back to truths I am taught at my church. It’s so encouraging to know that everything I am being taught is right out of the bible and so on track. I still long for heaven. I still long for my pain to go away. For my leg to be healed. To be able to walk normally and do all the things I used to. But I am trying hard to please God. Every day. And while I am longing to be “home”, I know there is a reason I am still here. 

2 Corinthians 5
For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.
 2 For in this tent we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling, 3 if indeed by putting it on we may not be found naked. 4 For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 
6 So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

Hebrews 11:14
For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.
 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on for ever; in which every chapter is better than the one before…”
The Last Battle C.S. Lewis

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