Ahhhh... the mother ship...

I've finally realized what's been missing in my life lately. It's been a while since I've communed with the mother ship. This evening, I made an executive decision that I needed to head out and rejuvenate. Besides, I've been messing around with not writing so much lately that I need to get back in the game. The cool thing about the mother ship is that I'm forced to work.

And, in this wretched book that I'm converting from mainstream to inspirational, I've been needing to rewrite a chapter and I'm just not feeling it. I LIKE that he's crass. But, alas, I have to remove it. I finally broke down and restarted it. So fine, I got rid of him being crass. Now, he's being a sap. ICK. But I wrote 12 pages, so I am tres happy. And I have a much better sense of HER growth arc, which previously, the story was mostly about HIS growth arc.

I have to say, though, it felt so good to finally write. Not just edit, which has been my commitment of late. Well, forever it seems like. I ought to update my word meters, but I forget how. LOL. The funny thing is, those stories... I haven't touched them in MONTHS. I've been so focused on figuring this "What does God want me to do" question, that all the other stuff has been secondary.

Of course, I still wonder if I'm being productive at all, since when God spoke to me about my writing all those months ago, He made it quite clear that I was supposed to be writing The Book. Except I just have nothing for it... so what am I supposed to do? I keep getting all of these unrelated ideas that I have written what I had, but then... nothing. I can't decide if this is just an exercise in obedience or if there really is a book out there that I'm supposed to be writing. ACK!! I'm insane!!

See the thing about deciding once and for all that you really are going to listen to God is that suddenly what you would think would be the right thing to do is no longer the right thing to do, and so your whole life feels like it's in this bizarre holding pattern. Ugh. But it also feels good.

And so, as I got to fill my senses with the bookstore, I began to feel my sense of purpose again. It felt good. And, as I browsed the shelves when I took a little break, I could actually see *MY* books there. It felt good. In a recent discussion on the ACFW loop, folks discussed what fame and fortune as writers looked like, and the thought that hit me about all of that was a saying a friend of mine told me-that fame and fortune makes a person more of what they already are. Not that I write for those things. But I know the ministry God has for me, and I'm realizing that I'm still becoming the person He needs me to be in order to handle it all. So it was cool to realize, as I inhaled the marvelous scent of books, that this is where I belong, what I was created to be doing, and that I really am on the right path.

I don't know what or where your mother ship is, but I highly encourage you, as you start thinking about what you're going to do with this coming year, to spend some time there, filling up your tank, chatting with God, and enjoying the sense of being who God created you to be.