Clarity

I attended a church Bible study group this week, and we discussed how God’s presence affects each of us in individual ways. It was a spirited, interesting discussion, and reaffirms my joy in establishing a regular prayer time and seeking wisdom from someone other than myself. Someone bigger, higher, stronger, and all-knowing. That this is even possible blows my mind.

One of the women in the group mentioned that when she feels God’s presence it brings ‘clarity’. Such an intriguing, wonderful word. I asked her to elaborate. She said when she feels that soul-stirring peace and a few chill bumps as she is in prayer, or doing something that she feels she’s been led by God to do…that it brings a sense of ‘oh, yeah, this is what I’m meant to be doing. All that worry, anxiety, and phoofing around about stuff is ridiculous. He is in charge, not me, and all will be well’.

I thought this perspective was magnificent. I’ve been thinking about the word ‘clarity’ ever since and today, my publisher clarified something really well for me.

To give a little background, I’m biting my nails over the release of Book Two in the Olivia Callahan Suspense series, and things have gone wrong and taken longer than I anticipated to get going. Therefore, I’ve not been able to advertise, get my book trailer done, create new publicity sheets, send out a newsletter, or saturate social media with the new cover, or move forward in any way. Pre-orders, for instance. Not happening, at least for now. I’ve sent several emails asking what the heck is going on and none of them were answered. So I muttered and moaned and complained and waited. Don’t we just hate waiting? When we don’t know if, when, why, or how anything is happening in something that seems oh-so-very important to us?

Today, not wanting to bug her but annoyed at myself for thinking that I’m an irritation…I sent yet another polite email inquiring about status. To my delight, I got an immediate answer. Seems this person had had a health issue, had been unable to move forward on many things, but was roarin’ to go, and here, now, Kerry…this is what’s happening and this is what you can do for us.

This was great news to me! I had found my ‘clarity’ and I think it would’ve been easier without the moaning and complaining (my poor husband). Plus, in the vast expanse of not knowing the status, I’d spent a great amount of time designing my own personal version of what I considered to be the best book cover ever. Which is hard for me to resist, because I was in the ad design field for many years. However, today my publisher brought ‘clarity’. I was in no way going to cause them to start over and do a re-design, but they would consider my suggestions and try their best to make me happy with what they had already designed. She promptly sent me the cover designs for my input.

To summarize, they are in charge and I’m not.

I thought back to the Bible study. Isn’t that what God tries to tell us…all the time? That’s He is in charge and we are not, so why waste our time phoofing around endlessly?

I have decided that I will use ‘clarity’ as my focus during my quiet times in the mornings. In these polarizing and confusing times…I can certainly use more ‘clarity’ to start my day.