Gentle Reader,
I missed my people.
I don’t regret retreating from this space. Obedience is always good, even when it’s hard. It always feels right. But while it’s freeing, in this season, to focus on other words in other places, I miss joining the #FMFParty chat with regularity. (Yes, I know it’s only been two weeks). I miss interacting with them and you. I even miss opening that vein that all writers cut time and time again, spilling it across the page for public consumption.
That’s what happens when you release the good for the better. You miss the good. And that’s okay, because it’s still there. Something to come back to, even if it’s not exactly the same.
Tonight Kate moves us to discuss: quiet.
Go.
Public platforms, no matter how small, require noise.
And so going quiet was a conscious decision to trust in the Lord and His timing.
I thought I’d be further along on this writing path than I am. Fifteen years ago, if I imagined being in my early thirties at all, surely there published books or a respected career as journalist involved in the dreaming. That’s the thing – I could have done it. Oh, not the published book part. But the journalism part, that was realistic. I was on that track. I would have been successful. There’s no boasting involved here. I had wanted to write for a newspaper for years. Pursue the stories. Break the news. I had the talent and the drive.
Then God.
Didn’t recognize Him at the time. Didn’t see the graceful motions of His hands, ushering me onto the road He had designed for me.
A quiet road.
By degrees He has made me smaller. I have worried, wondered, if this means lesser. But what is “lesser” in the Kingdom of God? “Lesser” is meaningless when considered in the light of glory. His fame, His name, is what matters. Mine will blow away like the dust, remembered by few, if any at all. Once, this frightened me. Now…I wonder if there is not untold richness and blessing in obscurity. In the letting go of one’s ego, He becomes bigger. Not that He is ever not larger than everything. I simply get out of my own way and begin to see, just a little, how grand He truly is.
So I turn my energy to this other project, one that may only be seen by Him alone. I trust Him. I have faith that even if the tapping and the researching and the editing and the beginning again are nothing more than an exercise of faith that it will be worth it. Even if my headshot never appears on a glossy cover. Even if I’m never recognized by anyone “important.”
I go quiet here to be louder there and even that may be silence in the end.
But He knows.
Stop.
