Choices like this are always hard for me for a couple of reasons:

• How do you choose your favorite child? Since every post comes from my heart, choosing my favorite post is about the same as choosing my favorite child.
• I write for my own enjoyment and don’t strive for profundity or eloquence—not that I would achieve those if I did strive for them. So it’s a little presumptuous for me to say any of posts are “best.”

In spite of the difficulties, however, I’ve come up with a list of posts by month.

• January: A Thirty-Six Year Tragedy—I chose this post lamenting the tragedy of 36 years of Roe v. Wade because I am passionate about saving the lives of unborn babies, and the thought of the 50 million babies denied the right to life sickens me.
• February: What I Learned from Love—I have been so blessed with the love of my family, the love of my husband, and above all the love of God that I was delighted to share my great loves.
• March: Healing Miracles—It took a series of three posts beginning with this one to describe the many healing miracles I’ve experienced in my life. What a blessing to experience these miracles and what a blessing to share them to the glory of God.
• April: Adversity? What Adversity?—This post was another opportunity to share the blessings I have experienced in life. April posts included five of six parts of a series on memoir writing, which I hope was helpful to readers. However, sharing God’s blessings is more important to me.
• May: Lessons from Community—The thing that surprised me most about blogging was the creation of community, and this post tells what that means to me.
• June: Creating Fictional Characters—This post was the first in an eight-part series based on a course I taught. The series was popular among readers and generated a lot of comments, and a couple of the posts rank high in Google for the phrase “creating fictional characters.”
• July: What I Learned from a Blooper—I enjoyed recalling a silly blooper I made that gave me the chance to share a little about physical therapy for strokes.
• August: Mission Impossible: Book Trailer for Dream or Destiny—Joanna Young’s challenge to post something we’ve never done before motivated me to try creating a video, which I’d wanted to do for a long time. Although I was satisfied with what I did for a beginning, I have yet to go back and improve the video enough to post it anywhere else.
• September: What I Learned from Laughter—This post links to a previous entry, which I enjoyed because I don’t often write humor.
• October: Domestic Violence and You—The last in a seven-part series, this post shared ways all of us can help with the problem of domestic violence, a cause close to my heart.
• November: Advent—We get so busy during the Christmas season that it’s easy to let other activities take priority over the reason for the season. Advent helps us prepare for the coming of the Lord.
• December: Christmas Gift-Giving—Though it’s important to focus on Jesus as the reason for the season, giving gifts at Christmas is a long and cherished tradition. The best gifts are those that come from the heart.

I’ve had some wonderful authors visit my blog this past year. Each of them deserves recognition; I couldn’t choose any one of them because I couldn’t choose all of them. Some posts weren’t considered because they didn’t contain anything original from me. The freelance rates survey took a huge amount of time and energy to compile. Recognition of special days—such as World Alzheimer’s Day, I Love to Write Day, and Religious Freedom Day—and special organizations and programs—such as Operaton EBook Drop: Free Books for Deployed Soldiers and Free E-Books for Read an E-Book Week—generated many comments. However, I limited my choices to posts that reflected my opinions, beliefs, and experiences.

Only two posts during the year generated 100 or more comments: World Alzheimer’s Day (102 comments) and Comments, Spam, and Comment Spam (100 comments).

The most-visited post this year continued to be a post from 2007: How Much Will It Cost? Average Freelance Editing Rates. The most-visited post written this year was Creating Fictional Characters—Part 1: Characters Are Story People. There were several other posts from 2007 and 2008 more popular than any 2009 posts.

Rather than believing that the quality of my posts is deteriorating, I choose to believe that good posts have staying power. That’s what I learned from 2009.

My father turned to chicken farming after it became impossible to grow crops or provide feed and water to the cattle. He even gave up growing his beloved vegetable garden because he couldn’t water enough to keep the plants alive.

So as a young adult, I had no experience with plants. When I worked as an employment counselor for the hard-core unemployed in the 1960s  War on Poverty, I wanted to brighten up my dreary office. I bought a small ivy plant at a church bazaar. I dug up some dirt from the backyard and planted the ivy in a small cheese crock. In spite of  my lack of knowledge, the little vine thrived.

Mr. Martin, the supervisor of another department and a plant lover, brought me a mother-in-law’s tongue (a.k.a. snake plant) as a companion to my little ivy. Still knowing nothing about plants, I followed the same formula as I had for the ivy: dirt from the backyard in another little cheese crock with no drainage. Like my church-bazaar vine, the mother-in-law’s tongue thrived.

Then Mr. Martin, a heavy smoker, told us he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. The day he went into the hospital for surgery, the snake plant started looking limp and pale.  

Whoa! This had to be a coincidence, but I wasn’t going to take any chances. I decided I should learn something about plants. I bought a book and discovered I should have used potting mix instead of backyard dirt. I should have used a container with a drain hole or at least put a layer of rocks on the bottom of the crock for drainage. I bought potting mix and new containers. I haunted garden centers and asked questions until the clerks were ready to throw me out. If someone recommended plant vitamins, my plants got vitamins. If an expert said I need to fertilize, I fertilized.

All the attention seemed to make a difference. The little plant perked up and started looking like its normal happy self about the time Mr. Martin was released from the hospital.

All went well until Mr. Martin took a turn for the worse. So did the snake plant. I read more books; I asked more questions; I followed more advice. Mr. Martin improved, and so did the plant—temporarily. For the next few months, Mr. Martin had a series of ups and downs, and so did the plant he had given me. When Mr. Martin lost his battle with cancer, the little plant looked worse than it ever had. When I returned to the office after his funeral, my little snake plant was just a pile of mush on my desk.

Although I couldn’t save that little plant, in the process of trying to, I had accumulated dozens more plants (that soon grew to hundreds), acquired enough knowledge that people were asking me for advice, and developed a love for plants. A couple of years later, I quit my job, disillusioned with the War on Poverty.

I opened a small retail plant shop that expanded to a larger store that become an interior landscape company that grew to be one of the three largest interior landscape companies in the area before I sold it to a large national corporation twenty years later. All from trying to keep one tiny plant alive on my desk.

After spending two decades managing a team of more than a dozen people maintaining thousands of plants in hundreds of businesses, I could write a book on the lessons I’ve learned from the plant world.

But the most important lesson—the one I learned when I tried to keep a plant alive as a sort of talisman of a person staying alive—was written long ago far more eloquently than I could express:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. ~ Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

photo credit: madaise

This post is an entry in Middle  Zone Musing’s What I Learned from the Plant World groupwrite project.

Added 8/17/09: Thanks to Matt Keegan for using this post as inspiration for You  Want to Pull in Readers? Tell a Story.

While I’d like to say I’ve never experienced any of those, you’d know I was lying. The hard part was deciding which one to write about.

When I was in physical therapy following a stroke, the therapists used what I understood to be a gate belt. It was a long canvas belt they strapped around my waist. At first, before I could sit or stand, the therapists used the device to transfer me in and out of the wheelchair. When I reached the point I could walk, they held on to the belt while I walked to keep me from falling. They could pull me back if I leaned forward or to the side because of my poor balance.

I was in the rehab center for a month as an inpatient and went back several times a week as an outpatient for many months after that. For most of that time, the therapists strapped on the belt when I started therapy, and it didn’t come off until the end of the session.

Gate belt seemed like a strange name for the device, and I wondered why it was called that. A locked gate to keep me in place, maybe?

Then I wrote a romance novel in which the heroine experienced a stroke and went through much of what I did. When my mother read the manuscript, she said, “I found a typo in the book.” She pointed to the page. “You spelled this word wrong.”

“What do you mean? Of course, I didn’t spell it wrong. G-a-t-e, gate.”

“No, Lillie,” she said. “It’s gait, g-a-i-t. You know—like walk.”

Oh …

From that experience, I learned that my vocabulary isn’t as good as I thought I was.    If I wonder about something—like why a medical safety device to help a patient walk is called a gate belt—ask.

And I learned that even if I called the device the wrong name, it still did its job. I never fell in therapy, and I learned to walk again.

The video below shows a young lady in therapy walking with a gait belt.

1. a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.
2. a locality inhabited by such a group.

Today, you’re just as likely to mean any group of which you are a part that shares common interests. Often, the communities we belong to are virtual: blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Plaxo … and an infinite number of other groups, tightly or loosely structured, formal or informal. 

This month, Robert Hruzek at Middle Zone Musings has challenged us to write about What I Learned From… Community for his monthly group writing project. Compared to most bloggers, I’m a social media dud. I’m on Facebook and LinkedIn (and many more that I thoughtlessly joined when someone sent me an invitation). However, when I see “what are you doing now?”, I draw a blank. I’m not doing anything that would interest anyone else. I’m a poor friend to all the people I’ve invited or accepted as friends on the various social media networks. It’s not that I don’t want to connect with people—it’s just that sending a virtual plant or talking about what I’m doing or taking a quiz to see how much we’re alike doesn’t make me feel connected.

And the idea of Twitter is overwhelming to me. I see snippets posted on blogs, and they either don’t make sense to me or they seem to be a waste of time. I know many, many people love Twitter, make real friends, and find it productive. However, it appears to me to be like talking to people at parties—something I’m really bad at doing.

Guess I’m beginning to sound antisocial and the last person to understand community, much less learn anything from it. But I have a wonderful little community right here on my blog, and I’m part of the communities of other bloggers. Although I post a fair amount about writing, publishing, books, and authors, I have deliberately made this a personal blog so I’m not limited in what I write about. I post about my Christian faith, patriotism and troop support, and random musings.

That creates several sub-communities among my readers. Some like to read my Christian posts; some want to read about writing, publishing, books, and authors; some enjoy both; and some just find an occasional post of interest.

I’ve learned that small communities form when people share interests, even if only some of the interests are shared.

I confess I don’t pay as much attention to blog stats as I should. Recently, though, I looked at where my visitors come from and was surprised to see how many come from India, which is second only to the US. I have no idea why so many people from India visit my blog. If you’re one of those readers from India, maybe you can share in comments what attracts you here.

I’ve learned that geographic location or native language aren’t very important in determining who makes up a virtual community.

A significant number (125 to 200 each month) of my readers leave comments. Often, the comments are more interesting and informative than the post itself. Readers share their own knowledge and experience, which adds perspective that is missing from my post. They ask questions, which allows me to expand and explain my thoughts. They challenge me with different opinions, which requires me to evaluate and defend my own opinions and beliefs.

I’ve learned that conversation makes community interesting, entertaining, and educational.

DoFollow motivates many bloggers to leave comments, but as long as the comments are relevant, I appreciate them. Unfortunately, it’s becoming more difficult to separate legitimate comments from spam. Unless the person has left comments before, I delete comments that just say “great post” or “keep up the good work.” In some cases, those may be sincere, but so many of these are spam that I think they all are.

The spam that irritates me the most are those comments that quote part of my post or an earlier comment. If they quote my post or my comment, I catch it easily. But when they quote someone else’s comment on an old post, it’s not so easy to catch. So when I get comments on old posts, I go back and read all the previous comments before approving a new one. Although I could cut off comments after a certain time period, I don’t want to do that because I get valuable comments from people who go back and read the old posts when they discover my blog.

I’ve learned that some people try to gain the benefits of community without adding value, but that just makes me appreciate the community members that contribute even more.

Above all, I’ve learned that even a shy wallflower can be part of community and love it.

I’ve been through a number of experiences that could be called adversity … things like:

• Rejection, both personal and professional
• Robbery and molestation at gunpoint
• An attack by a Doberman requiring more than 50 stitches in my head
• A burst appendix I didn’t know about for a week
• A stroke at the hands of a chiropractor that put in a wheelchair for five years
• Uncontrolled myoclonic seizures for six years, keeping me from participating in life fully

Yet in this Holy Week, I am contemplating what my Lord and Savior did for me, and I realize that, compared to Jesus, I’ve never suffered adversity.

As Isaiah (Chapter 53, KJV) prophesied:

 ¹Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?

 ²For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

 ³He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 ⁴Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

 ⁵But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

 ⁶All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

 ⁷He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.

 ⁸He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.

 ⁹And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.

 ¹⁰Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

 ¹¹He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

 ¹²Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Nothing I have ever experienced or ever will experience can compare to our Lord and Savior being beaten, mocked, tortured, and murdered in the most vicious way.

And why? For my sins and your sins and the sins of the whole world. If I were the only person who needed redemption, Jesus would have died for me alone. My sin makes me Judas betraying Him, the chief priests and scribes condemning Him, Pilate washing his hands of Him, the crowd calling “Crucify Him!,” and the Roman soldiers killing Him. 

Yet Jesus prayed on the cross, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34, KJV)

What have I learned from adversity? I’ve learned that …

• Jesus “was oppressed, and he was afflicted” (Isaiah 53:7, KJV), and any adversity I will ever endure is mild compared to what He suffered.
• Whenever I go through adversity, Jesus is with me “for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” (Hebrews 13:5, KJV)
• “The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18, KJV)