The Next Chapter

Last week was the end….the end of a struggle, the end of a fight that was so hard fought that I am still worn out and recovering from the effects. For months, I tried to improve on the environment that I was working in and was ultimately let go of in the worst way possible. An attack on my integrity, on my ethics, was the name of the game and instead of stooping to a level that I might have felt so inclined to, I ended the day happy that I had done things on my own terms…I didn’t give in, I didn’t quit, I didn’t give up.

Yet, with every end, there has to be a beginning to something, and the end of working for said company is the beginning of the next chapter in my life. This next chapter, of what will easily become a ten volume memoir, is the one that I have been waiting my whole life for and promises to be the most exciting.

See, I’ve wanted to write since I was twelve. And back in the day, I was told that if I wanted to make a living off my writing, then I better hope I’m good, else I won’t make much money to support myself off it. My dreams trampled, I gave up. Years later, I picked up the passion again, only this time I wasn’t exactly writing things I should have been writing. So I took my material at the time and dumped it in a cylinder trash can and lit it all on fire. A prayer left my lips, one that told God that if He ever wanted me to write again, He would have to give me the material and the passion Himself.

Years from that point, my passion returned, but only after I had made a decision that I was going to move to Seattle to attend Bible College. Now I had a dilemma…follow my spiritual calling or follow my artistic calling. I became so anxiety ridden from trying to pick that I drove myself practically insane…until a fellow camp counselor that summer turned to me and told me that God sometimes wants us to pick a path and he’ll bless the one that we have chosen.

I sighed with relief and picked writing.

Since then, I’ve heard many promises from God regarding my choice, ones that I sometimes wonder may have been my own wishful thinking they seem so incredibly impossible. But we deal with a God that doesn’t know what impossible is. We deal with a God that keeps His word and won’t lead us astray. I deal with a God that has carried me this far and won’t let go when the dawn is about to break, even if sometimes I feel too weak to hold on.

As my adventure continues into this next chapter, I hope and pray that I have the strength and determination to keep going. The fog has lifted, and now I can see the shore, but there’s still a long way to go and I’m still tired and worn out from the previous battles.

Taking the Promised Land is no small task…for us, anyway. For God…well, that’s a different story altogether.