Dear Debbie:
I have been reading your books for as long as you’ve been writing them and once I get one in my hands, well, what vacuuming and making dinner?
A few years ago I woke up to find myself blind. There was no warning, no diagnosis to let me know this was coming. I had lost my mom, who was my best friend and also a Debbie Macomber fan, a few months earlier and now I had lost my constant companion since childhood, books.
I tried but could not embrace audiobooks. Whether it was a mental block – to hold a book is my happy place, no matter where I may be – or a physical aversion, I quickly realized that if listening to a story was my only option I was out of them.
Beyond thankfully, I have regained some sight. I am legally blind and am unable to see most colors and my vision is reminiscent of snow on an old TV. I now have a machine that allows me to enhance the vision that I do have and after over two years without, I am reading again. Whose books did I catch up on first? Yours.
Last night I met you at Pearl S. Buck International. As I am unable to drive, my husband brought me. He is a guy’s guy, like your Wayne, but he watched Cedar Cove with me and loved it. He has always felt a connection to you as he was the man in the Seahawks shirt last evening.
I want to say to you now what there was no time to say last night. You have brought me hours of joy and when I returned to reading after that difficult time away, I found old friends, new friends and in a way my mom, waiting for me. Being able to read again gave me back a huge piece of the thing I had lost more than any other when I woke up to find it dark: myself.
Thank you for sharing your personal story last night. You are perseverance and grace personified and I can only hope that these two traits seep out of your pages and into me. For all the words you have given me, the two words of “thank you” seem ridiculously inadequate but they could not be more heartfelt or sincere.
With great love and gratitude for who you are and what you do,
Sister Rain
GO HAWKS!
