In moving to a new place (again!), I’ve had a fresh wave of opportunities to share my testimony and answer the ubiquitous question, “What brought you to Colorado?” I’ve invariably focused on the five years from 2017—which I mark as the beginning of the chapter that culminated with this move. And usually, I take a humanist bent, explaining the series of choices between finishing my fellowship at the end of 2016 and loading all my earthly possessions (plus my dog) into a 12-foot Penske* fall of 2022, headed toward my fifth state in fifteen months were we to count by IRS standards (we are absolutely not counting by IRS standards).
Once, Holy Spirit nudged me to segment this period a slightly different way—beginning it not with the completion of my fellowship (12/14/2016), getting my dog (1/10/2017), beginning my spiritual direction cohort (9/8/2017), not even my first real bout of wanting to quit my corporate job (and the closest I came to being fired; around my 28th birthday, September 2017), but rather, 11/21/2017, when I prayed Father God would give me an original story to write, and two days later, when He answered that prayer on Thanksgiving, as though I had added a note requesting overnight delivery.
With five years of hindsight and process in my belt, it now occurs to me that Father God answered that prayer beyond what I asked for or imagined. In what I had lived as an experience of redirection (not far off, but woefully incomplete), I now see a far more glorious and holistic answer to prayer. Father God did not just give me an original story. He has led me through a calculated process resourcing me to write it—from an intensive season of healing my core wounds, to the opportunity to witness and stand alongside others wrestling with their spirituality and trauma—both gifts of breathtaking insight into the human soul and invitations to greater tenderness and nuance in handling story—to this current period of un/der-employment with its surfeit of time to rest and write. (What am I talking about? You see how these worldly values slip in? I am perfectly employed—by a holy undertaking and for a carefully discerned season).
May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us;
establish the work of our hands for us—
yes, establish the work of our hands.
Psalm 90:17
I am present to the grace on this season, aware of the uncanny ease with which, after almost five years of process and framing the novel-now-trilogy, the character arcs and word count and strategies out of plot holes have come; how since beginning to write in earnest last May, a light of electrifying ideas has arrived to banish any specters of block that threatened to dam the flow. It can only be Holy Spirit keeping me aloft this long, establishing the co-creative work He has given me to steward.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
Ephesians 2:10 NASB
It’s not all easy. The challenge has been to be humble enough, sensitive enough to Holy Spirit to not insert my ideas of what should happen and what it should be, but to remain curious until I, as NT Wright says**, “understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together” and stumble upon what I call “the only possible ending” alongside my characters. (I hope to take this same approach to raising kids!) It’s to set aside, frankly, the desire for worldly success. I’m reminded of the quote attributed to Mother Theresa, “We aren’t called to be successful but faithful.” For me, right now, that looks like looks like posting up at the coffee shop Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays week in and week out, whether or not I have a plan (but—this is not a euphemism; it actually happened—going to the zoo to play if I’m feeling that old, familiar pressure to perform. ANIMALS.). It means focusing my energies not on writing the book, but getting myself out of the way of a good work I believe Papa God has prepared in advance for me to do. The book as He envisions it has already been written; I only need to uncover it.
In this respect, I’ve found it helpful to think of writing as an unveiling, not unlike our sanctification is an unveiling. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” I interpret this as, “Have caution, have reverence for how you work it out and don’t race ahead of what Holy Spirit is doing” (Colossians 2:12-13; Galatians 3:3). He’s proven Himself faithful to provide the ideas as I’ve needed them, a daily bread, if you will—and they’re all the more intricate for coming from the greatest Storyteller. Likewise, Holy Spirit can be trusted to teach and guide and convict, to slough away the things that are dead and chip off false selves and polish and buff and shine. I don’t—you don’t—need to make something happen. Our only job is to be faithful to stay, while outworking it, while writing it, in the place of joy and rest and abiding, so that we’re seeing clearly and not clouding the thing with our own judgments. I really think I’m onto something here.
It’s been a brilliant season. It’s gratifying to see how, after letting life teach me so much about the story, the process of writing is teaching me so much about life, Papa’s heart for us, and His heart for our cherished creative endeavors. My hope is to take this open-handedness with me into all of life.
How?
I’m sure He has a plan.
*I feel the need to clarify my dog rode shotgun in the cab. Lest anyone protest.
**In his article on the authority of Scripture
Fire and Whisper 