Retreat Results

I headed out Friday for a quiet day retreat asking God to speak. I had headaches all last week. They started at the base of my neck and seized my skull in a headlock. As we drove northwest, pain stabbed my left shoulder blade.

It took all morning, but hiking through God's natural stress-reducer eased my aching muscles and soothed my tired brain.

Lying on a blanket under a shade tree I began to hear God's whispers through the long slender leaves of the nearby locust. "Just be yourself."

 I have spent the last six weeks or so reading about all of the things I have to do in order to promote this new book. I need to use Twitter, FaceBook, websites, blog tours, and more. It has overwhelmed me to say the least. I have been trying to blog the way the "formula" says, and it has often felt so forced, so fake.

 And now, God says to just be myself? How can I do all of those things and still just be myself? Doesn't he know I have been myself for 43 years, and I still don't have a writing career? I just don't see how that is going to work. Fear's waters raged over me again.

And yet, the wind continued to whisper.
So my writing career may be very short-lived. I may have to work at a convenience store when the kids leave home. I might even be a lesson to other authors about what not to do when starting your writing career. But what I won't be is less than what God designed.

I will be myself.