{"id":14331,"date":"2026-04-24T23:41:54","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T03:41:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=14331"},"modified":"2026-04-24T23:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T03:48:21","slug":"a-thanksgiving-psalm-for-wonderful-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/?p=14331","title":{"rendered":"A Thanksgiving Psalm for Wonderful News"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TODAY I SIGNED WITH A LITERARY AGENCY FOR MY PSALMS BOOK!!!!<\/p>\n

Just in case you’re wondering, I’m excited about this.<\/p>\n

I wrote Praying with the Psalmists<\/em> as my pandemic project. In the past, I’ve written two middle grade fantasy novels, one children’s nonfiction book, and one picture book, but never found a publisher for any of them, and I stopped trying back in 2018 when I got on the Newbery committee<\/a>. That experience was amazing, but made me feel inadequate writing for children by the end of it, and besides that, I wanted to shift gears.<\/p>\n

So I wrote a book about Psalms. The point of the book is to show people that you can use patterns from Psalms to deepen your own prayer life. And I feel passionately that laments – and complaining to God – are okay. In fact, there’s a type of Psalm that fits almost any human emotion – and in the book I demonstrate that by telling my own story, especially my difficult divorce.<\/p>\n

I took my time with the book, and when I started co-leading a church small group, I brought the group through the manuscript. I think it’s just right for church small groups, because although my story gives a background – it’s a format for your own prayers and your own stories, and is a good vehicle for sharing with each other. I hope that people will try it out.<\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to find an agent or a publisher for a few years now. As a librarian, I’ve seen a lot of terrible self-published books, so that’s slowed me down from going that route. Besides, I see and value the work that publishers do. There are<\/em> good self-published books out there, but most don’t have nearly as wide a reach, and libraries rarely buy them. It’s okay if my book doesn’t get published – but I honestly do think that people can benefit from learning to write their own psalms. So I did want to give it a decent try.<\/p>\n

And during the process, I learned that authors need to build their platform. So I decided not to wait until after the book is published to build a website for the book. I’ve made prayingwiththepsalmists.com<\/a> – it’s a subset of my Sonderbooks website<\/a>, but a simple redirect and registering the domain name give me a website for the book. I’ve got a page for each chapter of the book, giving the basics of writing each type of psalm. It’s missing my story to go with it, but each page has a link to example psalms I’ve posted on this blog. (I’ve finished all but four pages.) And I’m hoping that people will start posting their own examples (when they try it) in the comments. I’ve also made a free substack, Sondermusings<\/a>, so people can subscribe to my Christian writing and hear about my book. (Substack has a good subscription system.)<\/p>\n

I’m now to the point of daring to actually speak in person about it. In January, I did two sessions at my church’s women’s conference on writing laments, and people wrote some beautiful laments. And I’ve signed up to do an “experience” at Wild Goose Festival<\/a> in September – though I don’t know if I’ll be selected.<\/p>\n

Despite all that, I had some near misses but no acceptances from agents or publishers. Was getting discouraged. But a little over a year ago, author Maureen Wise found my website and asked me to review her book<\/a>, said we sounded like kindred spirits. Well, fortunately, I loved her book and did review it<\/a>. And she subscribed to Sondermusings. And long story short, she did a six-month internship at a literary agency, then a job search, and is now officially a literary agent with Metamorphosis Literary Agency<\/a>, and as of today, she is representing my book!<\/p>\n

So I am HAPPY about this!<\/p>\n

And yes, I know that this doesn’t guarantee she’ll find a publisher for it. But I’ve got someone doing the hard work, someone who’s read my book and believes in me – and it just feels awfully good.<\/p>\n

And I fully believe in celebrating every milestone.<\/p>\n

And how do I celebrate when I’m feeling strong emotion? I write a psalm! A Thanksgiving psalm<\/a> seems like the thing in this case.<\/p>\n

And as soon as I thought that, I started minimizing my situation. Thanksgiving Psalms in the Bible are about someone in who’s in deep trouble, and they cry out to God and God saves them. Besides, I don’t want to imply that somehow God gave me this blessing because I’m so spiritual.<\/p>\n

But then I was looking at today’s Facebook memories – and on this day precisely fourteen years ago, I signed the last legal paperwork from my divorce. (The divorce was done, but we had to file again to get him to fully comply with the agreement.) So signing a contract with a literary agency fourteen years later reminds me that, yes, I was in deep trouble at that time – and look how God has brought me through!<\/p>\n

So after all that explanation, let me write a short Thanksgiving psalm:<\/p>\n

Thanks for a Joyful Surprise<\/p>\n

Father God, Lover of my Soul,
\nthe God Who Sees,
\nthank you for the gift today
\nof a dream come true.<\/p>\n

I actually signed with a literary agency!
\nThis is something I’ve dreamed of
\nsince long before I wrote this particular book.<\/p>\n

And I think back to fourteen years ago,
\nand especially twenty years ago,
\nwhen my life was falling apart,
\nwhen I was heavily in debt,
\nwhen the vision I’d had of my future life
\nhad evaporated like a phantom,
\nnever to be.<\/p>\n

Lord, I didn’t understand
\nhow you could let my marriage fall apart.
\nI didn’t understand why you didn’t
\ngive my husband some kind of Damascus Road experience,
\nmake him see sense,
\nbring him back.<\/p>\n

Yes, okay, I needed to learn a lot!
\nAnd in the years that followed,
\nyou taught me,
\never so gently.
\nYou showed me
\nthat I was still lovable,
\nthat I still had a future,
\nthat I could still feel joy,
\nand I could take on new dreams.<\/p>\n

And that big one? Getting published?
\nI’ve dreamed it so long,
\nI just thought it a fantasy.
\nThank you for this joyful step in that direction.<\/p>\n

Thank you that you never abandoned me
\nand have brought me into a spacious place.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Friends, thanks for reading! If you want to support me and help me build a platform, subscribe to my free Sondermusings substack<\/a>! And comment on my blog posts. And thank you, thank you, to all of you who find value in my writing, from Sonderbooks<\/a> to my blogs. It just means so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TODAY I SIGNED WITH A LITERARY AGENCY FOR MY PSALMS BOOK!!!! Just in case you’re wondering, I’m excited about this. I wrote Praying with the Psalmists as my pandemic project. In the past, I’ve written two middle grade fantasy novels, one children’s nonfiction book, and one picture book, but never found a publisher for any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-praying-with-the-psalmists","category-thanksgiving-psalms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14331"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14336,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14331\/revisions\/14336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderjourneys\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}