Not long ago I had dinner with two friends who are both writers and bloggers. We had a great time together that night, chatting and laughing over our soup and salad and bread sticks. At the same time, though, the whole evening we were together I kept feeling an incessant twinge. I felt it in my gut, in the pit of my stomach – a hollowness, an emptiness. I found myself envying them – their readership and platform, which is larger than mine; the number of speaking engagements they are invited to, which is more than I have; the connections they have with other “big-name” authors, which I covet.
Later that night, tucked into the corner of my couch, I wrestled with competing feelings of emptiness and fullness. On one hand I was filled with the nourishing goodness of companionship and camaraderie. On the other hand, I felt depleted by this sense of perpetual needing, longing and discontent. Truth be told, I was more than a little disgusted with myself. These feelings of emptiness and not-enoughness are not new to me. I’ve been fighting this battle for a long time.
A few days later, I read this in Genesis:
“The Lord said to Issac, ‘Do not go down to Egypt. Live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and I will bless you.”
I felt those words were meant for me. I felt those words were speaking to that place of yearning, that place of not enough. Stay here, right where I have you, I heard God saying. Be grateful for what I have already given you, I heard him say. Live in this land, and I will be with you.
I knew those words were for me, but I didn’t like them. Frustrated with the fact that I’d felt stuck in the same land for a good long time, I was eager to move on to what I thought were bigger and better things. I was ready to do more with the gifts and tools God has given me. But he said no. God said stay.
Last week I wrote a post about an issue I am passionate about. I wrote it, I edited it, I worked and reworked it, and then I clicked “publish,” just as I’ve done with the thousands of posts before it over the last seven years. Except this time was different. This time the post took on a life of its own. It was shared and shared and shared some more, and I watched, stunned, as the Facebook button at the bottom of the post clicked toward 700 and then 800 and then 1,000 and then beyond.
In seven years of blogging this has never happened to me. For whatever reason, my blog posts are rarely shared more than 30 or 40 times, and typically they are shared far less than that. But on an ordinary Friday in the middle of January, one blog post clicked with people, and it took off.
Long story short, I sent a brief note to a generic email address I had for Huffington Post Religion with a link to that post, and within two hours, an editor there had emailed me back, inviting me to blog for the Huffington Post Religion page. Just like that.
Except not really.
I’ve pitched the Huffington Post a number of times over the last three years, and I’ve never heard a word back. I’ve pitched HuffPost Women. I’ve pitched HuffPost Parents. I’ve pitched HuffPost Religion. To no avail. Two years ago, in one of a dozen conversations I’ve had with my agent about “growing my platform,” she suggested that what I really needed was to leverage a much larger platform, “like the Huffington Post.”
I laughed when she said that. “It’s impossible,” I told her. “It’s never going to happen.”
There’s a reason I’m telling you this story, and it’s not to brag, believe me (for all I know, the Huffington Post will have absolutely no impact on growing my readership!). The reason I’m telling you this story is because I believe that God always, always has our best interests at heart. He knows the places he has for us. He knows the time that is best for us. He knows exactly when we should stay and exactly when we should go.
I’m not the best listener when it comes to God’s direction. In fact, most of the time I’m a terrible listener. I push and pull and rail and complain. When God says no, I say yes. When God says yes, I say no. In fact, there’s a very good chance God simply shook his head and rolled his eyes this week and said, “Fine! Here’s your damn Huffington Post.” {my God swears from time to time}
Seriously, though, I believe this. I believe God knows. He knows when we aren’t ready, even when we think we are. He knows when we are ready, even when we think we aren’t. God knows.
Whatever it is you do, keep doing it, as hard and frustrating as that may be. Know that even when you cannot see it right now, God is blessing the work of your hands. Know that even when you can’t feel his presence, he is watching over your journey through the vast wilderness. Know that God is always with you, and therefore you do not lack. (Deuteronomy 2:7)
