I had been told that I was going to die and soon. To get my affairs in order. It turned out that God had a different plan. He had something more He wanted me to do. Something that I had been ignoring and, instead, had been going my own way through life. It took a drastic turn of events to get my whole attention, but this was certainly the point at which I stopped what I was doing to reassess my life.
I’ve been a Christian for more than four decades. During that time, while knowing Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior, I haven’t given serious thought to where and what God wanted me to do. Measuring by man’s standard, I have been successful at almost everything I have put my hand to. Among them, I’ve worked my way up a large technical company to a high-paid and respected position with lots of travel and perks. I’ve also had a very successful internet business. Most recently, I have attained (and maintained for the last two years) the top reviewer position at a well-known internet shopping site.
During the days following my hospitalization last November, I was being both comforted and schooled by the Holy Spirit during the long hours I was awake. The steroids I had been given kept me awake constantly for weeks. You can see my earlier blog post about those days here: It sure beats counting sheep…
I was told, in no uncertain terms, that for at least a short time, I was to stop posting reviews of a certain type on that commerce site. I was allowed to write them for my own blog and youtube channel and even to post them elsewhere. There wasn’t anything wrong with the products I was reviewing nor with my reviewing them. What was wrong was how I felt about posting the reviews at the big site. I had let it become too important to me.
For a number of weeks, it was a moot point. I wasn’t feeling well enough to do much more than just get through the day. With each day, I felt stronger and started feeling boredom. I started to fall back into the bad behavior pattern. After all, the reviews were written and I was posting them elsewhere, why not there as well?
Around the same time, I was told that I would have to have a surgery to help diagnose the root of my health issues. That surgery set me back to barely getting through the day.
As I recovered a bit this time, I might have gone back to my ways but, in the meantime, my husband and I had started attending a new church via the internet. They were just starting a new series on Pick One, a discussion about making decisions. The focus was finding the path God wanted for you. If ever anything was meant for me to study, it was this. All of the sermons in this series meant much to me but two things really stand out.
In one sermon, the senior pastor posed these questions:
What are you doing now that you that you know you shouldn’t be doing?
What are you not doing now that you know you should be doing?
The first question was easy to answer. It was something that God and I had been discussing for a couple of months by that point. Changing my behavior had been difficult.
Trying to find out what I should be doing was even more difficult. It certainly would have been a lot easier if God spoke to me out of a burning bush and told me what to do. While that would have made my life easier, it would not have allowed me to grow and learn in my walk with Him.
Instead, I started thinking about what it was that I really wanted to do. I also asked other Christians close to me what they thought my skill or gift might be. The answer was always the same – I was told “you are a storyteller and a writer – you need to write.”
One might think that writing reviews would fulfill that gift. Especially when I had attained one of the most sought after positions as far as reviewers are concerned. But I was being told that while I could continue to write and post other reviews, I was to stop posting the type of reviews that put me in that top position. I was good at it and successful, wasn’t that enough to fulfill my writing desires?
Then, in another sermon in the same series, a teaching pastor made a statement that stopped me dead in my tracks and made me ponder everything I have done in my life. To paraphrase what he said, “If you succeed at doing the wrong things, then you are failing.”
You would also think that being at the top of the heap would have given me some sense of satisfaction, well-being, or perhaps a little self-glory. Nope, not at all. It was nothing to me. If anything, having once attained this high rank, I felt somehow compelled, against my will, to keep up the work to retain it. Interesting, isn’t it? Something that I didn’t want and didn’t care about became something that consumed my thoughts, my work, my money and almost my life.
When I started looking back over what I had accomplished in my life, I realized that, apart from my children and family, all else that I had worked for was meaningless. There was no “there” there. When everything was said and done, no one would remember any of it.
I began searching for what it was that I was supposed to write about or which genre would be the one that I would approach. My husband and I spoke at length about it. Throughout my “writing” career over the decades, my efforts had been either as employee for various companies or under a pen name for reviews. I had never put myself out there under my own name. I realized that whatever it was that I was supposed to write, it would have to be under my name. There would be nothing hidden this time.
Oddly enough, years ago, my husband had obtained a website address that was my name. I had forgotten all about it until this point. It came to mind and I realized that, initially, my writing would be on this website. But what?
Again, in the Pick One series at church, there was a study guide question that had immense significance to me during this period of indecision. It was:
How have you seen God use your life experiences and past hurts to help, comfort, and minister to others? Has that helped bring clarity to your calling?
Once I read those two sentences, I knew what I was supposed to write about on my website: my life experiences and past hurts. I had finally found what I was searching for.
That is how this blog began. I’ve found the path that God wants me to be on and the way to use the gift of communication He has given me. I will continue it as long as God directs me to do so. Each week, as I sit down to write, I think I know what my subject will be. Each week, I’ve written something entirely different from what my thoughts were inclined toward. I’ve found that His ways and thoughts are much better than mine.
I have found that writing these stories are both emotionally trying and, at the same time, immensely satisfying in a way my work has never been before. It is my deepest wish that these stories will bring some measure of comfort and assistance to you. That God will use these words to minister to you as well.
Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.