So, I’ve been plugging along at playing the writer since before high school. It was my big dream: write The Great American Novel, get thousands of adoring fans, go on talk shows, make lots of money, become a house hold name…yeah, the whole enchilada.
This summer, my youngest graduated from high school.
I wasted a life time dreaming.
Kinda.
I’ve been writing all that time, I just never took the plunge and seriously pursued getting published. Oh yeah, I sent a few things off with some wimpy cover letters, but once the rejection letter arrived, I went back to dreaming and gave up on pursuing.
Then, about two years ago our church did a lent devotional using the book Draw the Circle – the 40 Day Prayer Challenge by Mark Batterson. It’s about spending 40 days getting into God’s presence so He can outline an agenda in your life that you can circle and focus your prayer on.
Ok, I thought. Whatever. Since everyone else is doing it, I will too.
I began reading the book daily and following guidelines.
Day 1: get ready for God to move in your life, and begin a regular prayer life. The take-away idea was “if you pray to God regularly, irregular things will happen on a regular basis.” Ok, so I need to start praying more consistently. Got it.
Day 2: Established by God. “God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time, but it’s up to us to see and seize those opportunities that are all around us all the time…Only God can make the appointment, but only you can keep the appointment…. It’s your job to recognize and respond to the God ordained opportunities that come your way.” Whoa! That was a profound thought!
Day 3: Amazing things. That’s what God want to do in your life.
Day 4: Don’t pray away. Praying away is asking God to take away a circumstance. Praying through is asking God to get you through a circumstance. “The primary purpose of prayer is not to change our circumstances; the primary purpose of prayer is to change us.”
Day 5: Write it down. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalms 37:4” So the goal of this chapter was to determine what your desire in life is and write it down. Actually write it. Typically, I blow off questions asking for self reflection, but this time I didn’t. I had enjoyed what this author was saying to this point, and I wanted to get the most from my reading experience.
So, what exactly was the desire of my heart? It didn’t take long to gravitate toward the one thing I truly enjoyed in life: I like writing. I enjoyed the challenge of coming up with the perfect sentence, sitting back and just basking in the awe of knowing I had created that little masterpiece. I love weaving adventures in my head and watching them mature under a collection of a keyboard strokes. Writing was the desire of my heart. I looked at the verse again. Seriously? Was this book saying God would fulfill my desire to be a writer? Not just writing to get ideas out of my head, but actually become a published writer? Maybe even successful enough to make writing my full time career?
That was the moment I began taking my writing seriously.
That’s when Amazing things started happening.