Day Thirteen: The Chaser

I tend to think in possibilities, especially when I’m standing in God’s promises. My lot felt so very spacious in early 2019. I’d run through the insecurities of publishing (see Notebook 1 for more on that), I’d settled into a groove of teaching at the university, and for the first time since 2017, felt ready to write the sequel to Lu.

That’s when the doubt set in. If you are a person who doesn’t
entertain obstacles most of the time, doubt is a mouse in the house. I mean,
you’re not stupid. You know your animal kingdom. You know mice are “there,” but
they don’t belong “here,” so when one shows up, it’s a surprise attack – one I’d
inadvertently instigated because my resolution for 2019 was “trade-offs.” In
this year, I had aimed to be a woman who made dozens of “no’s” for a few, bold “yes’s.”

As I made plans for my “yes” to the sequel, the “no’s” piled
up:

A “yes” to writing meant a “no”
to spending all my time with my boys on their summer break.A “yes” to writing meant a “no”
to working for Miami and a “no” to a paycheck.A “yes” to writing meant a “no”
to my savings account since I’d be paying for a babysitter and summer camps.A “yes” to writing meant a “no”
to any other big goal. I couldn’t write a book and …A “yes” to writing meant a “no”
to staying up late, sleeping late, and any other vision of a lazy summer
schedule.

Match this against where the writing was at the time. Basically,
I wasn’t. Match this against how Lu was selling at the time. Basically,
it wasn’t. Match this against …

Prayer.

Yes, the doubt made me scream and jump on a table (I’m continuing
with the mouse metaphor, here). And then I smacked myself upside the head. Every
time. This happens every time I have a moment. Doubt chases possibility. Had I
learned nothing in the last two decades about the interplay of faith and doubt,
the seen vs. the unseen, and what gets a vote and what does not?  

To distill it – God’s vote is the vote. There is no other. I
prayed into my doubt earnestly and expectantly. From my vantage, I saw cost for
no gain, and this would be fine if it was where God was leading because God has
a way of flipping costs and gains, but if it wasn’t, I’d be left with bupkis.

In a doubt chaser, simple prayer is best.

What do you want me to do? I will do what you want me to
do.

In prayer, we’re in God’s presence, but that doesn’t mean we
always get direction. That morning in early March, God was pretty clear (and I
wrote it down in my journal*):

Things are not what they appear to be. I have blessed
your hand with what you are to do. Now go do it with all your might.

And I did [a few months later].

*Which some might say is a “no” to burning the journals! That’s still a “yes,” people!