The Burning Within Me

It's easy to feel overwhelmed or depressed in the world we live in. The news fills us with the saddest stories, we hear and read of other's sufferings, we struggle with our own issues. And often times, I find I allow these things to get the best of me. So I do my best to avoid the news, watching just the weather or looking that up on the internet. I try to find something to make me laugh every day - a good blog, a funny sitcom, a good joke. I try to look to the bright side of everything that affects me. Still, I have my moments. Living with someone with depression adds to this struggle to "keep my head above water", so to speak. So it is that with the flurry of this yard sale, cleaning out and up my house as I went along and now doing a basic cleaning and looking at all the things I need to deep clean yet, I am in a struggle. And always, there is the gnawing of getting back to my book. At times I think I am putting my heart and soul into my book all for not. And when you give so much of yourself, allowing the story to take you where it will, you are giving your heart and soul to it. I can take it if someone tells me it's no good (though honestly, I don't think I'll hear that because I know Whose hand was in the writing of it - that Greater Power) and I can easily take someone telling me I need to work on something within it. What creeps into my mind sometimes is that I will put all this work into it and it will all be for nothing. No one will ever see the good in it that will prompt them to publish it (and pay me enough to clear our ever-pressing debt). Yet, when I say those things to myself or my husband outloud, I feel a burning in my chest that I know is telling me this is not so. It assures me that it will be published and it will have the effect I desire and pray it will have - to improve our lives significantly in a financial way. It was, after all, the whole reason I began to put to good use this gift I have been given. When I was at my wits end doing medical transcription, sleeping only three hours a day during the week, and then being layed off, I prayed for something that I could do that would allow me to be here for my family, be the wife and mother I needed in my soul to be and still be able to significantly help us financially. After many days of praying for this over and over, that still small voice came to me saying, "I have given you this gift, why do you not use it? Write." And so I started putting together my book. It has been the most fulfilling thing I have ever done aside from being a mother. It is right and good and will be for the good of my family. And no matter what, no matter any delay that might creep upon me, I MUST finish this book and put it out there to be published. I am nearly done. I am so close I can scarcely believe it. And when I write it, it pours out of me like someone else is writing it for me, telling me the tale. I tell others I believe my main character wants his story told and what he can't tell, another steps in to. And in a way, I believe that to be so. But I also know who the real storyteller behind it is....An answered prayer and a given gift make it so.