Category: Faith

Today I am telling a story that I am living right now – a story of finding God’s true purpose for my life – and there is an awesome giveaway from Jeff Goins to go along with it!  If you’re most interested in the giveaway, just scroll down to enter.  He’s giving away two of his most recent eBooks, and I would love for you to have a copy!  I’ve read them, and they are just like all of his other works – useful, practical, and without fluff! Every aspiring writer’s must haves!

But first my story of becoming a writer and finding purpose . . . wow . . . yes . . . a writer . . .

I think the first time I really wrote about it was when I announced that I was getting off of the ferris wheel.  The ferris wheel started two years after I graduated college, and believe it or not I did get off a few times, only to get back on again.  It’s funny how the familiar, ever how miserable or possibly outside of God’s will, keeps us going around and around and around – feeling hopeless and afraid. 
That was me.  And sometimes it still is me.  But at least now I’m working on getting off for good.
 
But anyway, it was when I was sitting in John’s hospital room before he had his transplant that it came to me.  The missing piece to the puzzle that has left me feeling bound to a career I detested to the point of feeling moral guilt.  I began writing each day in the months that led up to those hospital days about caring for my sick husband and how my soul hurt and how God was faithful.  And with each post I wrote I felt better.  I felt like there was a place for my mind on those pages, and I was able to release it each night there.  Shortly after I began writing it became my mission to write for a purpose.  I did not know if John would die or not, but I was determined that our story would be used for good.  So I wrote it.  Day in and day out.  I wrote it.

And I remembered my little girl self sitting in my room writing a story about a unicorn.  I liked to write, and by school standards I was a good writer.  But I never thought so.  I got frustrated with it, and pushed it down deep, deep inside.   I remember telling myself over and over again that I wasn’t creative.  I was logical and organized and predictable.  I was the first child.  The responsible one.  Not the artist.  But no matter how hard I tried to make my life match these labels, it didn’t.  I was really a dreamer and messy and spontaneous. 

So I began to explore this new need to write that gave me my oxygen each of those days, in and out of the hospital, not knowing what tomorrow would bring.  And I began to really contemplate the effects of the ferris wheel and my purpose for this life I’ve been given. 

After those scary days had passed, I sat in our pastoral counselor’s office at church not knowing which way was right.  I knew I had to get off.  I knew the ride had to come to an end.  Then he said to me, “Brenda, you are a writer.  You are a creative.”

My world opened up.  For once I knew myself and was comfortable there.  It was o.k. to hate the ferris wheel and to be messy and disorganized and dream about unicorns. 

I was meant for something different.  I was meant to write. 

So, I began to study the art and industry of writing.  And, boy, is it vast and hard.  It is a lot of work. 

But there are some great people out there who not only are great writers, but who love writing so much they like to teach us how to do it better.  Jeff Goins is one of them.  His blog is an endless well of information, and he is so gracious that he offers most of it for free.

Most recently he has written two new eBooks: Every Writer’s Dream: How to Never Pitch Your Writing Again and Before Your First Book: 5 Tips to Get Published Now. 
    
I have read both of the eBooks, and this is what I like most about Jeff’s writing:

• He is honest.  He tells it like it is without fluff or dramatized sentimentalism.  But he is also encouraging. 
• His books are practical.  They are easy to understand with one, two, three, . . . steps to take.  
• His books are useful. I am always feel like I have information all in one place that I would have taken hours to find bits and pieces scattered all over the internet.  
• I am left with the feeling that he truly loves writing, so he genuinely wants to help people be successful at writing, too.

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For twenty five years I have been learning to run. 

When I was ten years old my best friend and I were in a children’s track club.  There is no telling how I ended up in a track club. I was the little girl who adamantly marched off the soccer field at five years old boldly declaring that she was never playing soccer again after falling in a mud puddle.  But somehow there I was in a track club with my taller, more slender best friend who looked liked a swan at any sport she played while I looked more like a waddling duck.  For the next seven years I have no recollection of running except maybe to get out of the rain or the cold.  The track club didn’t make me runner.

Then this running-thing came up again when I was seventeen.  In the back of my journal I wrote, “become a runner” along with about ten other aspirations I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime.  Each morning a friend and I would run in our neighborhood.  It was hard.  And it was only about a mile.  But it didn’t last for long.  My journal didn’t make me a runner.

Throughout college I ran off and on, but it wasn’t until after college that I became more serious about running.  If you want to call it serious.  I could finally run several miles – my farthest being seven.  Wow, did seven feel good.  I remember starting out on a seven-mile run one day and passing an old man.  He smiled and waved.  Then as I was on my way home, an hour later, he said, “You’re still running!”  Yes, yes I was, so proud while trying to stay humble.

At one point in my twenties I got up to about nine miles.  That was the weekend I ran my first 15K.  But that’s as dedicated as I got. 

Now it’s important to understand that I am not a running fanatic.  I have a serious love-hate relationship with running.  But the raw truth is

• I am barely five feet tall.
• I do not have skinny genes (nor jeans for that matter).
• Cancer thinks it has been personally invited to a party with the women in my family.
• And regardless of how sophisticated we get, exercise is still the best preventative medicine.

So I taught myself to run. 

At first it was a body game.  My heart and lungs did not want to run far.  And they let me know it.
But very quickly running became more of a mind game. 

Each time I would go out for a run I would keep my eyes focused on a place on the ground only a few feet in front of me.  I wouldn’t look far off into the distance.  This would just make my organs plead to stop.  Two miles ahead seemed impossible.  But two feet were right there.

Then I started focusing on the mailboxes.  I would pass one and look three ahead.  “I can make it to that one”, I coached myself.  A few minutes later I was there.  “I can make it to that one”, I would pump myself up again.  And off I would go to the next one.

Soon I was running miles. 

This past September I ran my first half-marathon.  It took me twenty-five years to know what thirteen miles feels like.  I now wonder if it was more that my body couldn’t finish the race or if my mind wasn’t ready.

As I begin this new year with my letter to Jesus and #oneword365, I hope to approach the year like I did running – fixing my mind on the landmarks that are right in front of me instead of the finish line that I cannot see yet because the finish line may take more than one year to get to.  My body may be ready for the whole race, but my mind has to get there too.

Several years ago the idea just came to me. I did not see in a magazine or on a blog. I just decided that on January 1st I was going to write a letter to Jesus. 

So I began to write. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. Four handwritten, computer-size pages later I finished. At the time I was a thirty-year-old single woman. And you know the exact words, bold and obvious, that danced around those pages. Who? Where? How? Why? . . . When?

The words were my tears streaming down my face. 

When I finished I folded the pages together and inserted them into a legal-sized envelope, wrote on the outside “My Letter to Jesus 2006”, and sealed it.

A year letter I unsealed that small capsule of 2006, and read those words once again.  Strolling down the sententces of the past, some words created out loud laughter and others revealed the wet tear stains.

Now, five years later, I still write a letter to Jesus every year.

I encourage you to do the same.

As you reread your letter a year later, it reminds you of two important attributes of God:

God is sovereign.

But he is also

faithful.

In my life so far, no year has left tear stains that are still sopping wet a year later until 2010.  That was the year the soil beneath my feet disintegrated right where I stood, and all that kept me from falling were the hands of Jesus.

It was the year my husband was put on life support and underwent a heart transplant. Simultaneously in a hospital 350 miles away my mom laid dying of cancer.

But as I read my letter from last year I am reminded of his hands. His hands formed with sovereignty and faithfulness. That kept me standing.

As you write your letter:

1. Thank God for the past year – for the good . . . and the bad.
2. Tell him how you plan to grow closer to him in the new year.

3. Ask him to show you where he wants to take you and to give you the courage to fall into his plan.