I walked into the writer’s conference far less confident than I appeared on the surface. The room was packed with hundreds of people, most seeming to be published, and I quickly realized I was not only a small fish in a big pond, but I was flopping with anxiety on the shoreline.
The second day presented an opportunity to pitch my work to a senior editor, and I had an inkling our ten minutes wouldn’t end with a proposal request.
“I like your synopsis, but I’m not positive the book would be ideal for publishing.” She gave me the professional advice I needed although it wasn’t what I had hoped to hear.
And, just as I had expected, I'd been 100% right.
The truth was, in it’s 82,000 plus word entirety, my manuscript was complete and ready, minus the fact that I’d re-written the first four chapters at least five times and hadn’t settled on any particular one. And yet, I was positive this was the book I was supposed to write.
At least, that’s what I’d been thinking for the last three years.
I came home to process the information, feeling even more a failure than before I left.
I often wonder why God gave me the gift of writing. To be honest, sometimes it feels more a burden than a gift. I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to, and even tried to, give up. And yet it won’t go away. I simply can’t do it.
Like Paul, I have prayed that God would remove the thorn. “Lord, let it die off if it’s never going to be anything. Go anywhere. Accomplish a purpose.”
But it remains. It won’t relent, and the longer I stay on this path, I’m discovering this fact: failure is fertile ground.
Rejection tills up the soil of my heart, and painful as it may be, I’m reminded that seeds cannot be planted on hard ground.
Rather, they must be buried.
Hidden deep beneath the surface, out of view, to begin taking root. To germinate and grow a great deal long before they ever break their way through and bloom.
I don’t know what goes on in those dark, hidden spaces of the earth to bring from the seed new life. I only know it take time, and patience, watering, and tending, and a great work of the sun.
So it is for us, friend. So it is for us.
In the tender soil of our failure, seeds are being planted. And just as He is faithful to water them, so will He ensure they grow.
It takes time.
It takes patience.
And it takes a great work of the Son.
