(Continuation of How I Became A Writer)
So far I had used writing to expand my very active imagination.
I had used it to help me focus in boring classes or meetings.
I had used it as a safe place to ventilate privately.
I had used it publicly to be a change agent.
I had used it to encourage and inspire others.
But I could have never foreseen what God had in mind next. He let me write without a pen and paper. He led me to the piano and activated my hands.
I was very close to my mother. Even as she was in her nineties, I was not ready for her to go to heaven without me. I grieved heavily after her death.
I had played the piano for years. I had now been a writer for years. But one day, in an amazing act of comfort, God gave me a new gift. He put music and writing together. He allowed me to be a music composer!
I was sitting at the piano, just letting my fingers drift over the keys free style. Suddenly I “heard” in my spirit the words that were matching what I thought were random moves on the piano.
However, nothing about that experience was random. God gave me the words and music to a song about my mother. “Butterfly” was the first of many songs God gave me. I learned He writes in music!
I became the head of the church drama team. I wrote a new script every week. Jay and I and our friends had a ball acting them out.
Jay and I taught several Sunday School classes. We declined the pre-written lessons. Instead I wrote the lessons each week, according to what I felt God wanted us to teach.
Sometimes Jay would ask me on a Friday what we were teaching on Sunday. I would say, “I don’t know yet. God has not told me.”
That was a formative time of moving beyond writing for myself to being in training to become God’s scribe.
Sometimes after I wrote and wrote, I felt God was saying, “I’m glad you got that off your chest, but now set it aside. You are not here to write your opinion pieces anymore. You write what I tell you.”
And so I would try again. One November during the Sunday School Era, I was asked to contribute to an advent series for our church.
It was an interesting time to be asked, since I had seemed to have lost my Christmas spirit. Traditions had changed in our family. Children had grown up. Elders had died. I was missing what we had in the past and frankly, bored with what was in the present.
However, I thought I could surely crank out one Christmas devotional. God let me do that. But then He gave me another one and another one. When I finally put down my pen, I had a devotional for each day of December and one for New Year’s.
Our church published them all on their website. I was amazed. So much love and joy flowed that year. God gave us all a Merry Christmas.
After the series was published, some people asked if it was going to be a book. I politely declined, but those seeds started growing.
Remember the beginning of my public writing when I needed a little push to take the plunge into publishing. God was about to give me that push … well, not really a push.
He gave me a wonderful Gift the following Christmas. Stay tuned to see what He gave me and the unique way He delivered it.
