I am reviewing the archives of my former blog on Xanga for a variety of reasons. I just came across this post, and it’s like looking into a journal at a moment when God met me. I’m glad I came across it! Enjoy.
I Just Heard God!
In reading Michael Scanlan’s What Does God Want, I came to the chapter on making decisions for your whole life. It was on vocations. (Note: I wasn’t reading the book regarding my desire to be published. I was reading it for an entirely different topic.)
He says the object of every vocation is God.
“The vocation call is more like the biblical naming, as in Adam’s naming the animals in the garden,” he wrote. It sort of defines you. “When God calls you to a vocation, he defines you for life.”
He goes on to say it’s a call to freedom and does not remove your free will nor will it restrict you.
So I got to thinking.
Being a wife was written on my soul, my DNA and my very being from the beginning. All my knuckleheaded dating decisions were a search for Steve, a foundational longing to fulfill this call to married life. Like St. Francis mistakenly was rebuilding physical churches rather than reforming the Church, I was seeking in wrong places. But it was a consistent response to my calling, my vocation.
I think being a mother is likely similarly written on my soul. We won’t find out for sure until I get to be one, but I see a similar pattern on the path to motherhood. I’ve actually been doubting this a little lately, asking God if he even wants me to be a mom at all. Today he reminded me that when He came to me at 21 and told me not to go to law school, a career search followed. My most critical decisions for or against a career boiled down to whether I could be the best mom possible while having that career. I was solid in that being a major criteria in the same way I was solid in knowing I had to teach overseas through DoDDS and not through any other school system. So God let me feel comfortable in our journey towards parenthood.
Still turned to God in my thoughts, I told him with all my heart that I wished I could just write novels and not spend so much time finding a publisher. I told him I wished someone else could find publishers for my books, and let me be free to pour out all that needs to come out in novels.
So he said, “Then find an agent.”
I heard him clear as day (not audibly). As clearly as when he told me to go join DoDDS, the military’s overseas school system. I just knew that I knew that I needed to set out to do that. It took two years, but I did get to go overseas with them and that’s where I had the best job of my life, got to lead women’s retreats, and where I met Steve.
And now I have a direction in search for publication.
I believe that agents probably make up less than half of the contacts listed in my phone-book-sized Writers Market 2009 book. So God just cut my search process in half, or less! Woo hoo!
KristineKohut.net 