Now that the audio version of When Despair Meets Delight is available,* I’m looking forward to how we can get it in the ears of prospective listeners. back along the arduous journey of the publication process. Some find self-publishing easy. Just write something. Plug it into a Kindle service. Punch a few user-friendly buttons and — bim, bam, boom — out pops a book. Looking back, I wish I had taken an easier path. But nothing is ever easy for me. I prefer to suffer. I’d like to think that choosing a more rugged, less traveled road would lead me to a greater destination. But it doesn’t always. There is no guarantee that the amount of effort we put into something will directly corelate to the finished product.

To say that the road to my book has been rugged would be an understatement. Not only were there detours, but head-on collisions. There were times when I traveled precariously close to cliffs with the tires barely gripping the edge of the mountain. Many of you have journeyed with me through this process and you have been an incredible encouragement. Without the support of my family, friends, and readers, I would not have made it to my final destination.  For this I am tremendously grateful. You have continued to provide support by ordering my book, posting pictures when it arrives, reading, rating and reviewing it on Amazon and Goodreads. Thanks to your generous efforts, more people are drawn to the message of how despair meets delight and this leads to hope.

They say writers can be our own worst critics and I would agree from my experience that this is true. Each technical glitch in my book in the e-version and in print causes me to consider if it was worth putting out at all. Or if I should have done it another way. If, if, if. If “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. But these ifs led me to miss the positive impact my book was having. I was discounting the countless testimonies of people who were reading my book and responding what a difference it was making in their lives. People like Denise from Chicago —

Tony…..I received your book and must say before even opening it to read I was fascinated by its sensory stimulus for me…..the smell of the print and the feel of its cover held me in a curious pause before I could open it to read it. As I started reading I could see your way of speaking vividly in the book and its friendly way of not being intrusive yet being engaging. I am forcing myself to slowly read and discover instead of gobbling down the book in one night…..since I am an avid reader and often can read a whole book in a day. You say things I want to ponder and reflect back onto myself. Your “bedside manner” is quite compassionate even when you are blunt and truthful about yourself but especially about this science we are trying to utilize with God’s word. Thank you for this hard copy that is signed…you are always thinking of others.

Thanks to you, Denise, and so many others who are reading and now listening to my work, we are cultivating hope for troubled minds like mine. Above all else, this is my goal. This is the goal of all who are connected with Delight in Disorder Ministries. We delight in the One who delights in us and we share this hope that when we delight in the LORD, God answers the desires of our heart. This does not mean we get what we selfishly want. It means delighting in the LORD molds our hearts. They become divine replicas. We come to desire what God desires, to want what is best.

I feel divine delight for the opportunity to record this book. My desire is that all who have ears to hear would hear not my words, but God’s Word that meets our human despair with divine delight and gives us hope for our troubled minds.