That picture right up there?
Y’all.
I’d pretty much written off any kind of experience like that.
Signing books?
Me?
A book I had written?
What?
My lit agent Esther Fedorkevich of the Fedd Agency threw a little soiree last night to celebrate the upcoming release of Raising an Original: Parenting Each Child According to Their Unique God-Given Temperament. She’s recently expanded her gorgeous offices and it was a great time to show off her new digs and to sign a few copies of the book for clients and colleagues and friends.
But it was so surreal.
Twenty-three years ago, I sent my first inquiry letter with some sample writing to a couple of publishing houses.
Rejected.
I kept filling notebooks, writing in spurts and stops.
Eight years ago, I started this blog.
Seven years ago, my pastors kept encouraging me.
And Esther and I started throwing around ideas for this book close to six years ago.
We got some feedback.
We retooled.
It sat on the shelf for a while.
I pretty much thought it was over.
But two and half years ago, we started again. Going a little deeper. Clearing out the dross. Honing in on the central message. Developing yet a third book proposal to send out.
Praying and listening like crazy.
And then God starting opening doors.
Wait, that’s not quite correct.
He’d been opening doors all along. But He was doing it in a series of intentional sequences. The ‘chance’ meeting with someone who had a publishing connection. The person who followed my blog who knew so-and-so. A series of events, some little, some not so little, that over time and over seasons, He somehow wove into a timeframe.
Even though to me, it seemed like nothing was happening and I was stuck with a ‘no’.
Until, in His time, it became a ‘yes’.
Now, we all know that there some things that we long to do or would love to see happen for which we don’t get the answer we want. You’ve got those areas in your life. I do to.
But Jen Hatmaker told me a while back, it’s the long game. We were talking books and writing and publishing, but I’m seeing now it’s even more than that. There can be a dream, a longing, an urgency laid on your heart that keeps you up nights and rattles around in the back of your head and for which it feels like you’ve got a space in your existence that can only be filled by that thing.
Sometimes, we’re wrong about those things.
And sometimes, we’re exactly right.
But when the timeline doesn’t match our sense of urgency, we can think that what is right must be wrong.
So.
That thing you long to do? That dream you hope to see realized?
Let the details unfold and flow.
Let God design.
Keep praying.
Keep writing…or dreaming…or dancing…or creating. Whatever it is that’s on your heart.
Because sometimes the timeline doesn’t match.
But the dream does.
(A big shout out to my amazing friend and photographer Shannon Lafayette. She took the photo of me for the back of the book cover and has a crazy incredible photography business here in the ATX and in Port Aransas. Check her out!)
