I’m not sure if you saw Monday’s post, but it was about God showing me something in a picture. This one…
Up top, in the center, is me. Funny thing about this picture is I had no idea it was being taken and no idea it existed. I happened to be on RCR’s website a week or so after the race and spotted it. I thought it was cool, and then my husband had it framed for my birthday that year. It hangs over my writing desk at home.
When I first started writing, for reasons I still don’t understand, my first protagonist wound up being head of PR for a NASCAR team. It was one of those times when the story took over and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop it. It was also a time when I was struggling with whether or not I was really supposed to be a writer. To keep it short, this is where God landed me. A place I’d deemed impossible to reach. All access with a team media rep just like my character. It still floors me.
That book never sold. Neither did its sequel, which is my favorite I’ve ever written. I was telling a friend last week I had no idea why God took me to the lengths he did in research for that book, just to let it languish. But I’m coming to the place where I’m okay with that because, on Sunday, God showed me something I never saw before.
You see, in that picture, I’m almost dead center. Not off to the side, or half hidden. I’m thinking that’s not an accident. Not because I’m the focus, but because God is. See, when He spoke to me on Sunday, I was praying about something I view as impossible. No matter how I play with it or turn it, it’s never going to work. I looked up, and for the first time in a long time, I spotted that picture, the one that I’ve always said is clarification God called me to write. (Another story, yet again…) And He said, “Look, I got you to an impossible place once. There’s your proof. You can’t call it coincidence or an accident. I can do it again. Stop looking at what you can do. Look instead at what I can do.”
Funny how I just realized that was the theme of our Sunday School lesson on Sunday… I’m just sayin’.
Dreams sometimes seem impossible. But when they’re God-given dreams, being obedient to Him will get you there, even when it seems as likely as a right turn in a NASCAR race.
Funny how I just realized that was the theme of our chapel at school last Wednesday… I’m just sayin’.
Maybe it’s time for me to shut my mouth and listen. How about you?
-JB
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