The Lord: My Author and Finisher

WRITING does not come easy for me. I am not a born writer. I write and rewrite and rewrite sometimes a dozen times until it finally ZINGS!
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If writing is hard work for me, why do I do it? The following quote by Madeleine L’Engle explains why I write.

A book comes and says, ‘Write me!’ My job is to try to serve it to the best of my ability, which is never good enough. But all I can do is listen to it, do what it tells me and collaborate.

Collaborate, according to my Roget’s Super Thesaurus means: work together, team up, coauthor, join forces. So I collaborate with the book but also with Elohim, the Creator God.

The Creator God is very much a part of my writing. He’s ultimately the Author while I click the keys on the keyboard. He gets me to my desk on days when I’d rather not. He’s the Finisher of each and every story that I work on so that after umpteen rewrites, when I read the finished work, I feel His Pleasure.

Though not a born writer, I realize I have always found great pleasure in words. I have filled journals with words from the early age of ten. At age thirteen, my Dad helped me select the right words for my first public speech. For a decade I worked as a speech pathologist helping children with delayed speech and language development and adults who’d had strokes learn to say words. My favorite book after the Bible is my Roget’s Super Thesaurus.

Words pepper the walls, counters and shelves of our home in southern Oregon. Plaques fill the empty space above many of our doors. I recently counted 17 words or quotes in one room. Two quotes stand out among many in my office: For This I Have Jesus and Do Something to Crow About.

Words and writing have served me well giving me an opportunity to live experiences a second time. As I relive life by writing my life stories I often hear myself say: Lord, You were with me even then, weren’t You? Writing enables me to see Jesus in the rear view mirror.

But mastering the craft of writing has been a long haul: fifteen to twenty years of writing classes and writers’ conferences with too-many-to-count rejections from book and magazine editors with only a splattering of memorable moments to prevent me from giving up.

I remember the night I read Twenty-Four Karat Miracle (now a chapter in His Majesty in Brokenness) in an adult education writing class at Palo Alto High School. As I finished reading, one of the other senior citizen students jumped out of her seat and shouted, “Judy, you’ve got a book in your belly.”

She was right. The book in my belly was published in August 2010. I thank the Lord for leading me to Createspace.com for a painless experience of self-publishing. The Createspace support staff held three Squier’s hands (Judy’s, David’s and daughter Naphtalie’s) and lead us along the path to finalizing the manuscript so that they could provide their top quality print on demand product.

Not only do I recommend them I am ready to use them again. All year I have busied myself with book number two – His Majesty and Me is my working title. The stories will convey my love affair with God, through His Hebrew names, including El Shaddai, Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Shalom and fifteen others. My prayer and goal is to send the PDF of the manuscript to Createspace by December 31, 2012. For this I have Jesus!

HOW ABOUT YOU?
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What challenge is staring you in the face?
What is too big for you to pull off on your own?
Is someone you love overwhelmed?

I have a Bible verse for us all – a verse God gave me during final week in college. (I know He gave it to me because to this day I still have trouble finding Habakkuk in my Bible.)

Habakkuk 3:19 (Amplified Bible) reminds me Who to put in charge of life’s IMPOSSIBLE assignments. I have crowned Him my Author and Finisher for my current writing endeavor. What do you need to hand over to Him right now?

The Lord God is my strength, my personal bravery, my invincible army; He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and will make me to walk (not to stand still in terror but to walk) and make spiritual progress upon my high places (of trouble, suffering and responsibility)!

Me busy writing in my study.

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