All week long, I’ve been trying to get the right words out, but maybe I just shouldn’t mince it. So here goes.
I ended a recent journal entry with these words, “I think I lost myself.” By that I meant, I had allowed the biggest, deepest, most passionate dream of mine to enter a slow fade.
Casting Crowns’ song, “Slow Fade” is about the compromises we make. How a small compromise leads to another, and we don’t really notice how we’re crumbling with each tiny resign. I didn’t realize until now how other things slowly fade as well.
I haven’t written fiction in a long time.
There it is. My heart. If you want to know why I write, it’s because I loved to read as a child. I still love to read today, but I was the little girl who lived in the worlds of fictional characters. They shaped me: how I thought about problems, how I looked at myself and others, and how I hoped. I’m much better for it, but I never had any Christian fictional books. I didn’t have Christian characters or their worlds to shape me or my world. It’s not because they didn’t exist, but it’s because I didn’t know they did. My parents didn’t either. Nobody in my family did.
Hey, I still turned out okay, but I’d rather have had books that pointed me to the love and grace of God. In our day and age, our words and stories have a way of getting out to the world through technology and social media. They have a way of sticking around forever. Nothing really gets deleted off the Internet.
My stories haven’t gone anywhere except different USB back-up drives. And even if I had completed them and sent them out, I don’t have illusions of offers of publication. I have hopes, but I also have rejection letters that remind me of how tough the market is.
But the point, really, is not to sell the stories, but to write them.
Of course I want to shape imaginations for God. I want to write stories of adventure, hope, and grace. I want a little girl somewhere to read my story and feel understood and motivated to dream bigger. That means getting the story out there.
But the point is to write. At least to me.
Because God gave me the gift to write. Though I am writing, I haven’t written the kind of words that would inspire that little girl I used to be. So I’ve been feeling like I lost myself because part of myself had fallen into a slow fade. It wasn’t intentional – the slow fade never is – and I didn’t make “bad” compromises, but I also didn’t take care of my dream, my God-sized dream.
When the Dollar Store sold seeds and gardening tools, I jumped in even though the only thing I knew about gardening was that I’ve killed plants before. But I thought this time would be different and it is! My spinach and flowers are growing…but my herbs are dead. I planted them in a planter without holes for the water to drain through. Then it rained for two days straight and I forgot to get them out from the rain.
I didn’t set out to kill my herbs, just like I didn’t set out to neglect my dream. It just happened because my mind was elsewhere. Because I wasn’t intentionally giving my care and focus. Because seeing soil day after day makes it easy to think my efforts are for nothing.
So last week, I gave up hope the seeds would grow, took my trowel, and stirred the soil. Was I wrong about those seeds! I dug up little green sprouts, and I felt that familiar guilt I get every time I had killed a plant or pet fish because I was impatient or forgetful. Maybe it’s the eternal optimist in me that made me cover up the seedlings with soil and coffee grounds (I heard it’s good for plants…anything for a fighting chance). I apologized profusely (I heard talking’s good for plants too).
You know what? They’re growing! Hah! I’m baffled, but everyday, more and more tiny green sprouts break through the surface. I may actually have home-grown herbs someday!
Just as I may have my stories out there someday, because God’s been stirring my soil…or my soul. On the heels of my journal entry, a book came in the mail that speaks to the very thing I’m going through, Brazen: The Courage to Find the You That’s Been Hiding by Leanna Tankersley. I’m part of her book launch team, and I do believe that was God’s doing because Leanna’s words encourage me to pursue the dream that I had unintentionally pushed aside.
I haven’t even finished the book because I’m digesting it slowly and doing the Reflection and Expression exercises, but I honestly recommend it. Chapter 6 was made for me. It’s like Leanna peeked into my diary or consulted with God to find the right words to speak into my heart. It’s the same things God’s been dealing with me, so I’d love to share a part of it with you.
For any number of reasons, some of you have given up on what you want to offer, and God is still standing on the shore, asking you to cast your nets one more time. Perhaps you’ve ditched your desires because your nets have come up empty one too many times. Maybe it has nothing to do with how many fish you are or aren’t going to catch on this cast. Maybe, instead, it has everything to do with the vulnerability of offering your soul even with no guarantees. (p 53-54).
An arrow to the heart! So here I am, baring my soul, and telling you that I’m not letting my God-sized dream slip into a slow fade anymore. I don’t have a testimony to share with you about a story of mine being accepted somewhere. As of today, they’re still in USB back-up drives. I haven’t touched a single one. But I will. My soul has been stirred and I’m going for it.
I used to think life is like Show and Tell. You need something to show in order to tell. But all I’ve got right now is faith. It doesn’t look much. You can’t see it, touch it, smell it, taste it, or hear it. But Jesus said that faith as small as a mustard seed can move mountains, and I want to try.
