I wish God worked at the post office.\u00a0 Then He would have a rotating two-tier wheel of clamps by His side.\u00a0 It would hold red ink rubber stamps.\u00a0 And if God worked at the post office, one of those stamps would most certainly say, God’s Will.<\/i> \u00a0We could just drop our letters at the post office and ask, “God, is this Your Will?”<\/p>\n
Everybody talks about seeking God’s Will.\u00a0\u00a0 I look for God’s Will just about as hard as anyone I know.\u00a0 In the first seconds of wakefulness each morning, my face smothered in the pillow, I say good morning to God.\u00a0 “Please, God, let me do something for You today.\u00a0 Let me know what You want.\u00a0 Give me the courage to do what You ask.”<\/p>\n
In the morning darkness, on the couch under a quiet brass lamp, I open His Word and read for daily guidance and comfort.\u00a0 During the day in the car, I turn to AM radio, listening to others who seek His Word.\u00a0 They speak with such confidence.\u00a0 They’ve found it, His Will.<\/p>\n
“Look,” they say, “ask yourself what your mission is.\u00a0 What do you hunger to do?\u00a0 What are your talents?\u00a0 God wouldn’t give you a mission and talents if they weren’t part of His Will.”<\/p>\n
It’s so tempting to latch onto their advice without challenge.\u00a0 I love to write.\u00a0 If I could sit at the typewriter skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I would scarcely feel hunger.\u00a0 Wouldn’t it be great if God loved what I love!\u00a0 But I know better…I think.\u00a0 My thoughts call up my personal divining rod:<\/i> Hitler.\u00a0 He loved cruelty, killing, and war.\u00a0 Does our own passion and commitment to a cause prove God’s Will?\u00a0 Hitler might have thought so.<\/p>\n
A Christian writer’s conference is a wonderful place to seek security in the love of writing.\u00a0 At my first writers conference ever, I carried one book and two articles in my bag hoping to find God’s Will in some editor’s approval. Encouragement was there.\u00a0 “Keep at it,” a few told me.\u00a0 So I listened eagerly for advice from the experts:\u00a0 buy tapes, buy books, write proposals and query letters, write more, join editing groups, expect rejection, keep at it, hundreds of rejections mean nothing, organize, keep going, keep records, keep writing.\u00a0 But above all, they intone, seek God’s Will.\u00a0 Remember, God doesn’t create talent for nothing.\u00a0 You can do it, get published, be a star, be a writer<\/span>.\u00a0 If you love it, God will, too.<\/p>\n I crave their reassurance, but when does my<\/span> will get relabeled God’s Will as justification for what I<\/span> want?\u00a0 If it’s God’s Will, why does he make me spend weeks writing and rewriting book proposals?\u00a0 Couldn’t writers just send out a book proposal to God at the post office and have Him stamp it with red ink:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 God’s Will<\/i> or\u2026<\/p>\n Forget It!<\/i><\/p>\n I must be God’s most rebellious servant.\u00a0 God, if it’s your will, make it happen.\u00a0 You’ve left too many hurting people on earth for me to dilly dally around writing query letters and book proposals.\u00a0 One mile down the street, Pat lies alone in her nursing home bed, her bones poking through tightly stretched skin all covered over with painful lesions.\u00a0 She is waiting for me to return this week, waiting for any bits of conversation with me as interludes in her long day, in a long week, filled with bed pans, IV’s, pain pills, and cold food.\u00a0 I don’t need publishing.\u00a0 I don’t need fame or money.\u00a0 At least send me a sign.\u00a0 Something big<\/span> that I won’t miss.<\/p>\n Lucy Swindoll understands.\u00a0 She told God she wanted to do something significant with her life.\u00a0 But she also begged,\u00a0 “God, let me know when that moment of significance happens.\u00a0 I know you, God, you value small things.\u00a0 I might miss it.\u00a0 Don’t let me miss it.\u00a0 I might do something so small I will never realize it was significant.”<\/p>\n Maybe Lucy Swindoll’s radio program was my sign.\u00a0 She caught me in the car on my way home from Officemax yesterday with her story of a birthday party in a hearse.\u00a0\u00a0 Immediately my mind turned to the unbelievable antics of her “gang of grownups” who managed to lose a long black car in the middle of the night. My giggles and laughs followed her details from one escapade to the next, until finally, she and her four friends sat, riding in the front seat of a police car to pick up the “lost” hearse from the police impound.\u00a0 I approached the turnoff to home and tapped my foot on the accelerator, “Speed up Lucy!\u00a0 I need to know how the story ends.”\u00a0 But they arrived at the police station at the very same moment I had to turn the car over to my daughter for her work transportation.\u00a0 Cut short, I turned off the radio, not to know whether Lucy was arrested or not.\u00a0 Ah, well. “God’s got more important things on the schedule for me,” I consoled myself.<\/p>\n Later that night, as I relaxed on the patio, my son Justin called for a ride home.\u00a0\u00a0 I pulled my feet off the coffee table and tried to gather energy to meet my motherly obligation without grumbling.\u00a0 Driving to meet him, I had a moment’s inspiration.\u00a0 On the way back, we could buy ice cream for root beer floats.\u00a0 We had never done this.\u00a0 It was just the excitement we both needed!<\/p>\n Maybe God wanted ice cream.\u00a0 Maybe it was He who pointed at Smitty’s grocery store, a place I never shop.\u00a0 Did He nudge me, while Justin was in the store, “Turn on the radio.”\u00a0 I did.\u00a0 I turned to my normal Christian station 960 AM, and as usual in the evening, it was lost in static.\u00a0 I thought of picking my regular country western alternative.\u00a0 “No,” God nudged again.\u00a0 “I’m here.\u00a0 Keep looking.”<\/p>\n Inexplicably, for the first time in my life, I turned to the FM dial.\u00a0 On the first push of the “seek” button, there was Lucy again, arriving at the police station, ready to pay $43 to pick up her hearse.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 Thanks, God.<\/p>\n I followed her story to the end, laughing all the way.\u00a0 Her point?\u00a0 She wanted God to use her and she wanted a sign.\u00a0 For Lucy, it came one night at a dinner party when an American Christian Writer editor walked up to her and asked her to write.\u00a0 Incredulously, she pointed out to him that she wasn’t a writer.\u00a0 What would he suggest, she queried.\u00a0 He asked, “What do you think you could write?”<\/p>\n “Well, I won’t use scripture,” she declared.<\/p>\n “Fine,” he agreed.<\/p>\n “Perfect,” she deadpanned, “a Christian writer who doesn’t use scripture.”\u00a0 Now, that’s my kind of writer, I thought.\u00a0 I quit listening to the radio and turned my thoughts to my own doubts.<\/p>\n “Is that you God?” I asked.<\/p>\n God is one persistent person.\u00a0 Elie Weisel is a writer rejected over 20 times because the world doesn’t want to get depressed about his life.\u00a0 Poor world.\u00a0 But finally, one person hears God’s call and publishes Elie’s words.\u00a0 His words and books based on his survival of Hitler’s concentration camps have pulled me out of my deepest depressions.\u00a0 I have survived my own life because Elie wrote his story and persisted to find a publisher.<\/p>\n A new writer friend Marsha tells me, “Maybe somebody else will know what you mean when you write.\u00a0 Maybe your words will help someone, someday.”\u00a0 I think of my father-in-law, the eternal atheist.\u00a0 Unexpectedly, he reads the book I wrote for my children, and he is converted for a week.\u00a0 It’s the longest week of his life.\u00a0 Is this a sign?<\/p>\n Tonight at 2:30 a.m., I wake, unable to sleep, restless, but settled.\u00a0 I need to hear God.\u00a0 I wander to the office and turn on the computer.\u00a0 God, is that you?\u00a0 I want to lie down, but I’m not tired.\u00a0 The strain of listening for God shatters my peace of mind.\u00a0 I seek the determination to walk away from writing, to let it go, but a pecking insistence remains.\u00a0 In the darkness, I must sit and type for one more chapter.\u00a0 “God is that you?”<\/p>\n “Please, God, I need a sign.\u00a0 There is simply too much of me in my writing for good judgment’s sake.\u00a0 I have promised a year. I’ll give writing a chance, just in case that’s what you want.\u00a0\u00a0 A year.\u00a0 I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do.\u00a0 But I need a sign.\u00a0 I can’t bear to leave Pat alone in bed during the day at the rest home unless I know there’s a better reason to write than keeping my own sanity.<\/p>\n “Please, God, if it is really You, use your red ink stamp.\u00a0 Better yet, hit me with a brick.\u00a0 I’m not a very good Christian. I need a big sign.\u00a0 I don’t think I will be able to detect Your whisper.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n