Yesterday, Ev and I watched a Hallmark movie set in the magnificent Yosemite Park. We saw the huge mountain settings, tall waterfalls, and were in awe of the massive rock sculptures and the comparative small people who tried to climb the rock formations.
Yesterday was also the anniversary of my mother’s death twenty-five years ago. I remember being overwhelmed by that fact, and that the world grieved that week for Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. Grief leaves a feeling of helplessness, and a time when calling on God’s presences is the only possible source of peace for the believer.
Likewise, I am beginning a new book, the third in the Seaside Saga books I’ve begun this year. Beginning a book is always consequential. There are always questions of “Am I up to the task?” “Is there something new to bring to the story?” “What is God trying to tell me and the reader as I begin this task.”
I’ve never suffered writer’s block, I never want to either.
So, from that perspective, two things emerged this morning. One is advice from a fictional character I invented in my book Cher’s Seaside Saga, the precursor to the book I’m beginning to write in which Cher’s father writes a letter to the main character. It turns out to be his last words to her, and she has read that tattered letter, tearstained and fragile, but learned from his advice. He wrote, ” Once you begin a process, see it to completion. It may surprise you how God takes over your progress and turns it into gold.” Never, in the story, could he have imagined she would create philanthropic organizations affecting hundreds of recipients, or adopt two families of siblings so they have recently become parents of seven. Cher becomes a remarkable woman, mostly because of her trust in God.
So then, the piece de la resistance, God brought me this verse on my daily calendar today. It is from Romans 5: 1-2 and meshes with where my brain is this morning as I begin to write: “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into the place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”
So, whether in the grips of grief, God will bring peace, and has. Whether we are diminished by the huge mountains we have in our pathways, God will provide the path through the seemingly impossible barriers, and when the first thousand words of 50 or 60 or 70,000 make their way to sentences and paragraphs, I can be confident that He will guide my characters and story to the perfect conclusion to bless the reader, and perhaps the writer too.
So, in the words of my imaginary character in book two of the series, “It may surprise you how God takes over your progress and turns it into gold.”
I pray that it may be so as I dedicate my writing to His purposes.
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