So, the other day, when my kids were with a grandmother for the first half of it, I achieved some amazing results in the realm of word count. When I’m actively working on a novel, my goal for every day is to write 2,000 words. Now, some days this is like pulling teeth. But on a good day, I far surpass that. When I was writing pivotal scenes in Jewel of Persia, I was putting down 5,000 words a day and feeling darn good about it. On Monday, I managed just over 6,500 words in my Annapolis story. 

Is this a record for me? No, but it certainly is since I had kids! And it left me feeling great. Like I accomplished something. Like I was ready to tackle the rest of the manuscript and bring it home.

Then Tuesday came along, and I only wrote 2,400 words. Only–did you catch that? That’s still above my daily goal, but it felt disappointing after that amazing 6.5K. And then yesterday, I didn’t even bother doing a word count. There was no point, I only wrote two pages. And I was grumpy and grumbling all afternoon because of it, taking most of that frustration out on the five loads of laundry I so did not want to fold but had to. (Yes, the socks got flung into the basket a little harder than necessary, LOL.) But then after I put the kids to bed,  I did manage to get through the scene I was having trouble ending, and into the next, so I’m at a good starting point today. I then jotted down my ideas for the next several scenes, leading up to the climax.

Here’s my point in sharing all this–if the rest of you are anything like me, we like to judge ourselves, and we have little to judge on but comparisons. We tend to think “I didn’t do as well today as yesterday” or “I’ll never be that again.” And maybe, in a way, that’s true.

But what I need to remember is that today is not yesterday. Yesterday was not Monday. None of those are tomorrow. Goals of one day, season, year, whatever, are not necessarily what we need to be shooting for the next day, season, year, whatever. For instance, I only have another 6,000 words to work with before this manuscript is supposed to be finished (though I might overshoot and have to go back and trim. Big surprise for me, right?). So my goal for today shouldn’t be “Write 6K in words.” It should be to write the next scenes as succinctly as possible, leaving myself as many words as I can for the conclusion.

It’s the same with anything else in life. Sometimes our goals have to be revised for the point of our story we’re in right now. Sometimes it’s enough to shoot for quantity. But sometimes it’s not about more, it’s about better-fitting.

This lovely insight brought to you by my inability to think of anything but finishing this book right now, LOL.

There are days when my prayers are all supplication. When I barely remember to thank the Lord for anything before launching into my litany of things I need His help with. Most days, I try to balance it out, to start and end my prayer time with thankfulness, with worship, and to put into the middle my requests.

On Monday, I had the Joy of getting so caught up in praising my God that I felt no need to talk to Him about my requests, because I knew that through that communion, my heart had been laid bare. He had heard all the cries of my heart, that gave tenor to the praise of my lips. It’s been a long while since my private prayers were so . . . joyful, and for no reason. I didn’t sit down thinking, “I’m just gonna praise the Lord today.” I sat down with that list of prayer requests in mind. But then I started thanking Him for all He is to me, and, well . . .

I wanted to share some of my reflections that I wrote down, simply because we can never praise Him enough.

~*~

You are faithful . . . just yet merciful. You are awesome beyond compare, yet humble enough to become man. You orchestrate all of history, yet still care to number the  hairs on my head. How infinite you are, O Lord my God, in every direction! You fill me to bursting with love for you, with amazement at your glory. You hear every cry of my heart, even if my lips can’t give it utterance. You hear, and you respond in ways I cannot see.

How often we ask to see–yet could our mortal eyes, our finite minds ever contemplate the vastness of your hand? We look for reason in the coporeal, yet never could we truly understand all that lies beneath.

O Lord, my Lord, I worship you and adore you. I adore you for all you are that I cannot comprehend, and I praise you for the glimpses you reveal to me!

And I am humbled to think that though I might give you my all, it is nothing. Nothing compared to what youetdo, what you orchestrate, what you give for me. I am nothing. You you love me enough to be my God and Father. I am a speck. Yet you created this universe and placed me just so within it, with loving care. You hold everything in the palm of your hand, yet you give me the will to choose my own path, my own way.

I want your path, my Lord! I want The Way, Yahweh. I want to walk only beside your footprints, I want to pull only so far as I can go and still be holding tight to your hand. I want to warm myself by the light of your countenance and bathe your feet with my tears. I want to give you all and praise you for leaving me, not with nothing, but with arms open and able to embrace you and your children.

Show me what you have for me, Lord, so that I might blow away the chaff and better serve you. Hew me, chisel me, refine me. Polish me, O God. Shine through me. Shine so hotly that the impurities are incinerated. Shine so brightly that I’m blinded to all but you.

Thank you, Father. Thank you for all, for every. Thank you for knowing, and for doing. Thank you for ministering to this pathetic woman on this cold morning and filling me to overflowing . . .

With you. Always, only with you.

Amen

Does anyone like to wait? I don’t think I’ve ever met such a crazy person. I’m not talking about being patient in a long line or restraining yourself from honking your horn in traffic. I’m talking being really, truly joyful as you put down the phone or close out the email that said, “Not yet. I know you’ve been anxious, but not yet.”

It’s hard. When you’ve been looking forward to something, when your hopes rest in a possibility . . . it’s hard when that possibility remains just out of reach.

Hard–but that doesn’t mean it’s cause for discouragment.

I don’t find it a coincidence that so many of the devotionals and inspirational quotes I’ve read in the past year deal with waiting, with resting, with that lull between times of action. And all the messages are the same: we might get impatient, but this is the time when God’s preparing us for what’s to come. This is the time when He’s building our roots before visible growth, when the waters are gathering beneath the surface before the wave breaks. This is a blessing. This is rest–if only we can sit back and let Him rejuvenate us instead of stressing out about it.

This came up again for me yesterday because, within an hour, we got two big “Not yet” answers. The first was concerning a publishing proposal. It wasn’t a No, it wasn’t even a “maybe at some far distant time.” It was instead a request that I finish up, send it to her when it’s finished, but don’t kill myself over pace in the meantime, and a promise of an answer in March. In some ways, this is the best possible news, because I need to take a few days from writing to get editing done here real soon, and I hadn’t felt I had the freedom to do that. So it’s good . . . even if it leaves me with a bit of ennui over yet another Not yet.

The second was concerning our church. We’ve been renting a building we share with other groups since our inception, and it’s not really working anymore. But our hunts for a place of our own kept turning up empty. We recently found a building we feel can work, everything was chugging along . . . then we get the email saying, “I think it’ll still go through, but not yet. We have to check on XYZ first.”

It would be easy to toss our hands into the air and say, “Fine! Okay, God! You’re not smoothing every bump, so fine, we’ll just give up!”

But that’s not right. When God calls us to leave something behind, he fills us with peace about it. He breathes excitement into us about the new path he wants us on. Never, never does He work through discouragement. Never, never does He work through destruction. He is a builder. He edifies, He encourages. If we get discouraged by minor setbacks that isn’t Him telling us to quit. That’s someone else entirely.

No, God isn’t into tearing us down when we seek him. But sometimes, because He sees a lot farther into the future than we can (like, all the way), He makes us wait just a bit longer than we wanted. Maybe just a week. Maybe a couple months. Maybe years or decades. Why? Maybe because it’ll grow our faith. Maybe because there other things at work that need to be dealt with, on both physical and spiritual planes. Maybe because He wants us to enjoy just a little more rest before the change begins.

I don’t have answers about this stuff, not definitive ones. But I know that when disappointment sets in, He isn’t the one that whispers, “Give up.” He’s the one that whispers, “Hold on.” Yeah, that can mean “wait.” But it also means, “Take My hand.”

I’m holding on, Lord. I’m not letting go, no matter how long it takes. When my strength fails, when my patience runs thin, when hope feels faint, You’ll sustain me. That‘s the way You work.

Most of my readers know me well enough to realize I have two small kids. Xoe’s 5, Rowyn’s 3 next month. One of my greatest frustrations is that it seems that three minutes can’t pass without someone screaming, “Mommy!” Followed by some demand, request, complaint, or whine. It gets a little old sometimes. And then there’s the physical side. Rowyn’s still in that stage where, when he wants me, it isn’t enough to just be where I am. He must be up on my lap, and he does it with energy. He runs across the room, throws himself onto me, and, once situated, just tosses his little self in whichever direction he wants to go to get comfortable.

Now, as one tired mama, this can make me groan. I love that he’s a cuddle-bug, but good golly. Sometimes holding onto this kid feels something like wrestling an alligator. In spite of busted lips, head bumps, hurt arms and bruised knees, he (in true little boy style) never learns to slow down and be easy. No, it’s always full steam, all out. Even when it comes to hugging.

As he did one of his signature lunge-to-the-left moves while supposedly on my lap to get rocked before bedtime, my “oh, my aching back” thought was quickly eclipsed by the realization that this was trust. He trusts that Mommy isn’t going to drop him or let him fall. He trusts that for his every move, I’ll make a countermove. And he trusts that no matter how much I might grumble or chastise, Mommy loves him and will still hug him, rock him, and cuddle him. Even after I say rocking time is over.

It’s humbling. It’s especially humbling because, while I want to make the obvious analogy to God, I realize it’s not perfect. Why? Because God’s arms are so much better than mine. God doesn’t grumble about his aching back. God doesn’t lose patience with our constant whining. God doesn’t ever think, “Can’t you just do it yourself?” No, He in fact wants us to turn to Him with everything. He wants us to ask him in every moment what He thinks we should do. He wants us to toss ourselves into His arms without a care, with all our energy.

My kids have it right. But me–man, I’ve still got a ways to go. Not just in learning to fly to the Lord with such abandon, but in remembering that that’s the way it should be with my kids, that’s the relationship God set up that we are an imitation of. Sure, I want my kids to grow into independent individuals capable of making decisions and, you know, functioning away from the apron strings. 

But how do I get them there? By catching them every time they fly at me, answering when they call . . . so that when they’re ready, I can teach them that God is the same way, only better at it.

We tend to complicate things, don’t we? We have this idea these days that our goal with kids ought to be to get them out and on their own ASAP. But is that how we were designed? And because we tend to get impatient with them (I’m speaking for myself here) we then wrongly take that analogy to the us-God relationship and get into the mindset of, “I don’t want to whine to God.”

That’s just not the way it works. Which in turn teaches me that maybe I’m looking at some other things the wrong way too. But one thing I know–no matter how much I mess up, how many times my stubbornness and pride lead me to bruises and scrapes and head bumps, no matter how many times He has to chastise me, I know my Father’s there, His arms open wide. And I know that no matter which way I turn as I jump into them, He’s going to catch me. He’s going to love me. He’s going to hold me, no matter how long I need it.

Once upon a time, I was a New Year’s Resolution girl, back in the day when I had nothing but time in which to contemplate this stuff, and diaries to write it in. My first real set was when I was 13–I resolved to finish the novel I was working on, and I did.

So along with writing new resolutions on Jan 1, I would take Dec 31 to look back at my past resolutions and examine how I did, to look over the year as a whole. This was even more fun than coming up with new resolutions.

I didn’t write any resolutions down last year (or for countless years before that), but I still like to look back over the past year as it comes to an end. This last one was rather interesting. Speaking professionally, I experienced some unexpected shifts. I was encouraged to write a second Biblical fiction, which I hadn’t planned on doing back in January. Follow-ups with editors at major houses led to a lot of proposal requests. I went from not knowing what project to work on, what was next for me, to having a release scheduled for Jan 3, 2011, and another in the works for 2012. Plus with WhiteFire expanding, that’s a whole new level of, er, newness as we find other authors to work with.

Speaking personally, it was also a year of change. I took the plunge into homeschooling, and discovered how rewarding (and occasionally frustrating, LOL) it can be to share that with Xoe. We watched Rowyn grow from toddler interested only in Mickey Mouse to a little boy wild over anything with wheels. This has also been a year when I realized my sanity is a lot more secure with regular, if brief, breaks from my precious little kiddos. 😉 Special thanks to the grandmothers for watching them now and then and giving me the time I need to recharge–by writing, LOL.

I’m still probably not going to write down resolutions, but I’ve already started some of the things I want to improve on this year. I’ve started exercising again (ugh), and have started prayer journaling. I’ve toyed with it throughout the year (both, LOL, but primarily the journaling), but never kept it up for various reasons. Both my mom and grandmother got me beautiful journals for Christmas though, and nothing inspires me like a beautiful journal. So since Christmas, I’ve been starting each morning by reading a bit in my Bible and then journaling.

Here’s why I like it. With two small kids and no guaranteed quiet time, having a time for praying just doesn’t always happen. I try. I do. But it often sounds something like, “Dear Lord, thank you for–“

“Mommy! I need you!”

“Just a minute, please. Lord, I thank you for my beautiful family and–“

“Mommy, he’s hitting me!”

“Mommy, Xoe take my toy!”

“Dear Lord . . . what was I saying?”

Focusing was always a challenge, and half the time I forgot what in the world I was trying to pray about. With journaling, I’m writing it all down, so when I lose focus, I can get it back very easily by rereading my last sentence. Ah, writing. (Which is, of course, its own reason for me to do it this way.) 

Another thing I love about it is that it’s a record, so you can go back days, weeks, months, even years later and see how the Lord has answered your prayers. When I’ve done journaling in the past, that was what I loved most about it. In looking back, I would discover things I’d prayed about that I’d totally spaced after a while, but which I could then see that God had faithfully answered. Pretty cool!

Oh, another quick, cool idea someone on one of my writing loops mentioned a couple years ago. Rather than making resolutions, they ask the Lord for a word each year, one word that they are to live up to, strive to achieve, or which will be important that year. I’m asking the Lord for a word for 2012 too. =)

So while I may not be making traditional resolutions, I’ve already seized the spirit of the thing. How about you? Do you write resolutions, or maybe set goals? What’s the one thing you want to work on this year? Or the one word the Lord has given you?