I wish I could tell you the number of times people have shyly come up to me after I have spoken somewhere to tell me they would like to write a book too. Some have a clear idea of what sort of book they hope to create. Others, however, are much more vague. Some, I suspect, like the idea of being published, but not all the hard work needed to get there. But for the majority, it’s more that they can’t seem to allow themselves to actually name their dream, to commit to a goal they believe in their heart of hearts they will never attain. So it would be foolish – a waste of time really – even to try. Better to forget about it and go and do something useful.
My heart goes out to these people, because I felt like that myself once. Before I began writing seven years ago, I had wanted to write for at least twenty years and often talked about it with my family. At one stage, in desperation, one of our daughters gave me a pile of books on how to write, accompanied by a homemade bookmark, bearing the inscription ‘Write your own!’ However, it took the ending of a ministry I loved, followed by six months’ break, before I finally realised that the moment had come in my life when the dream to write and the call of God were in fact one.
It happened like this. I was holidaying in Turkey and was sitting reading Isaiah 42 in my bible one morning. I had read verse 9 – See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare – and noted in my journal that I knew my old role had gone but now I truly wanted to hear the ‘ new things’ God had for me. Then I read on – and stopped in my tracks at verses 18-20:
Hear, you deaf, look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the servant of the Lord? You have seen many things, but have paid no attention; your ears are open, but you hear nothing.
Yes, it was a strong challenge – a rebuke even – but so patient and kind too. It was as if God were saying with a big sigh: ‘Come on, Jo! How many times do I have to show you? Go home and start writing the book!’
Well – I did! That was what it took for God to get through to me that yes, it was okay to write – that this, in fact, was what I was being called to do at this stage of my life.
So what is God calling you to do? Is it perhaps the very thing you’ve been dreaming of doing all your life? Could God in fact be giving you permission to bring your dream to reality? … Could you possibly have a book in you too?
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 