My Matthew 25 "cup of cold water" opportunity (Attn picture book friends) updated

I just wanted to let everyone know how appreciative that Nathan is that total strangers reached out to love him and even offer to help. He’s thrilled. “This will be my very first job that I’ve had in my life!"

Today’s sermon was the sheep and goats parable, but before the service, a young man came and sat down next to me, in his baseball cap and sporting his ever-ready grin. His name is Nathan. He has a twenty-five year old body, but the mind and memories of a ten-year old. That was his age when he was when barely survived a bicycle crash and lives with the resultant brain injury (TBI) that has frozen him emotionally in time.

“I have written a story. Would you like to read it?” There is no higher honor to an author than to read their work! (Ask me how I know.) I eagerly took his plastic-lined, front and back 8 ½ x 11 manuscript and hurriedly read it, knowing that I had scant little time to finish it before the service started.

It was an amazing children’s story of a child bullied in school, who goes to the zoo and befriends the tiger there. And the tiger follows him home, goes to school with him on the bus, and the bullying miraculously stops.

I was stunned. It doesn’t even need much editing. It may need to be shortened a bit, cleaned a tiny bit, but the bones are there. And no, the little boy didn’t get eaten!

Nathan has been on disability, and lives a life of isolation because he can’t relate well to the adult world and he can’t hang around with children that he most easily relates to.

I’m looking to help him find the cup of water that he needs.

Do any of you have a children’s book editor that you love? I’ve told Nathan that I needed to find an illustrator for his book. (He then asked me if I knew someone who was a draw-er. His vocabulary is one word larger today.)

He asked how much money it could make him. “You never know. Some stories just take off. But I want you to own your book and the rights to it and have all the income.” He’ll never have the capacity to have ‘real’ job, and anything he could earn will give him a boost that he needs. He is afraid. But the story that he wrote and the story that he lives on a daily basis are beautiful, and will resonate. It sure did with me, and instantaneously at that.

This is an amazing community, and I’m asking for the help and insight that you all have and so freely share. I would love to see Nathan’s book be birthed and thrive, so that parents and children that read his story will have a chance to learn about traumatic brain injuries and how the effects can be overcome. (And the net effect on the injured—they get bullied.)

I’ll be meeting with him on Wednesday morning, so please let me know what resources are out there. Thank you all in advance!