This present year

Make twenty new friends, check. Diana Matthews smiled as she checked this list. It had not been easy for her to do since she was shy and an introvert but God really helped her and so she could check that one off her list.

Do not date anybody this new year, check. This one was remarkably easy since she was far from being miss popular in school and the year had been a very busy one for her.

Make an A+ in all my courses, check. This was not a surprise since she was a nerd but she had gotten used to putting it on her new year resolutions since she was twelve years old so that if she gets distracted she can look at the list and get her head screwed on straight.

Try my best to forgive my dad and restore our relationship, check. This one hadn't been easy considering the fact that he had left her mom with three children when the first one was barely five years just because he found somebody 'better' and with more money, his words not hers but with the help of God, she will say that they are making an headway though they were still a long way from being cuddly around each other.

Visit twelve orphanages, check. Three year ago, her church had done a visitation to a nearby orphanage and since then she had made it a point of duty to go and visit an orphanage every month with whatever amount of money she had.

Finish reading my bible from the beginning to the end, check. With the help of God, she was able to fulfill this list and it brought her no small amount of satisfaction and pride.

Write at least 80,000 words in my novel this year,................. Uh oh, this was a problem. When she was writing her new year resolutions last year, she had not banked on being so busy or losing her younger sisters in an accident which screwed with her schedule for about three months and so she was still way behind on her writing. 

"Okay", Diana thought in her mind," I can do this", she checked and saw that she had written 50,456 words. When she checked her wrist watch, the time said 8:23pm and it was the 31st of December which meant that she had about three and a half hours to write about 30,000 words. The story was not the problem, the problem was time. It seems odd that a seventeen year old girl is complaining about time but the year had been filled with lots of activities for her. 

Diana altogether stopped thinking since she knew that if she continued the way she was going, she would not write up to a hundred words before twelve a.m and powered on her system. She went to her file which she named "Slow Fade" and went to the last word she wrote, and to her annoyance and irritation she saw that she did not remember where she had stopped since it wasn't a statement just four words that told her nothing. She wanted to scream but since she knew that screaming would not accomplish anything other than wasting her time she settled for crying while figuring out what to do. It wasn't that it was the first time she had forgotten where she was in her book since she had not had time to write regularly but the fact that she had to write almost 30,000 words in three hours was not helping matters. She checked the time the secont time and saw that it was 8:27pm so she did what one of her teachers told her to do when she reaches a block like that, she marked it and started from another scene and then she started writing. As she was writing, it occurred to her that the highest number of words she had ever written in an hour was a thousand and that was if the words were flowing but she did her best not to think about that seeing that she did not have much time and so she shut off her thoughts and concentrated on "Slow Fade" and thankfully there was no need to stop and think of the next scene since she already knew what was going to happen and it slowly unfolded under her fingers. Diana kept on typing and when she felt uncomfortable in the position she was in, she checked the time to see how far she had gone and the time was 9:17pm. To her surprise, she saw that between the time she started typing and that moment she had written 1558 words. She was so surprised because she had never being the type of person to work well under pressure but here she was now, under the pressure of a deadline and she had written more words than she had ever been able to at once. She quickly thanked God for that grace, made herself comfortable and continued writing. Since she didn't like rereading her words as she was typing but would rather wait until she had finished the book, she was not bothered with editing and that was well since she really did not have the time to edit. She also thanked God for the fact that she had been in the home library for almost an hour and she had been left alone. As she was still counting her blessings, her younger sister, Liana came in to tell her that her mom needed her yo stop what she was doing and her something for her. Unlike earlier, the temptation to scream wasn't as strong but what she felt tempted to do was to throw something across the room but she made herself calm down. Since Liana could never be accused of being patient, she had left the room immediately after delivering her message. Diana felt like a failure since she knew from experience that once her mom needed her like that, there was no way she was going to be able to come back to continue writing so with a big sigh, she stood up and went to meet her mother. She was surprised when she got to her mother's room and she was not there since her mother had taken to her bed after her twins Lillian and Joshua had died in a car accident when her mom was driving them back home from school. Diana leaned against the bedroom door and signed as she remembered Lillian's little giggles when she was playing and how much Joshua loved his twin sister and was always protecting her despite the fact that they were both ten years old. Tears came to Diana's eyes as she remembered how lively her mom had been and how happy their home had been when the twins were still around. Just then she heard her mom's voice and so she wiped the tears from her face and followed the voice. To her astonishment, she saw her mom seated in the living room playing with her siblings and although her eyes still portrayed sadness she looked happy. Her breath caught when her mother looked at her and smiled at her because it had been a long time since she had ever seen her mom that happy. She went on leaden feet to where her mom was to ask her what was wrong but her mother beat her to the conversation.

"Diana, I'm so sorry for how I've been behaving towards you and your siblings since Lillian and Joshua died", tears had come to her mother's eyes at their name but to Diana's amazement, she did not break down but continued talking," I'm so sorry that I've not been the mother you needed and you've been taking care of me but I promise that although I lost two of my children, I still love the ones that are still here". Diana looked at her in shock, how had her mother guessed that they were all struggling with the fact that she no longer loved them but she did not say anything until she saw her mother pleading with her with her eyes," Oh Mom, it's okay, you've been grieving and I'm old enough to take care of my siblings."

"You might be old enough but you are not the mom and so since I am the mom I'm ready to continue my job as your mother."

With a cry, Diana fell into her mother's arms and cried as she felt relief run through her at the fact that no matter the fact that her mother was grieving, she was back to the land of the living. She thought about her novel and the fact that it would soon be a new year but she knew that the novel could wait, celebrating her mother's return to the living could not.