Shedding those extra kilos!

A few weeks ago, I had the special joy of whizzing off to Sri Lanka to spend ten wonderful days with my precious (86 year old) Mum. As I excitedly packed for my trip, one of the difficulties I faced was that the combined weight of clothes, gifts and other necessities being packed into my bag, came to a hefty 35 kilos. Why do I call it “hefty”? Because my bag allowance was only 20 kilos! Oh oh…! 15 kilos too many!

Something had to go!

After much unpacking and repacking, taking out, throwing out, putting in, pulling out and whatever else I did… I finally was only 5 kilos overweight! Whew! Much better! I hastily typed an email to my Mum and my sisters telling them of a specialist doctor’s appointment I’d attended that day. I added a post script.

PS. I’m still trying to get rid of a few kilos. Alas, I’m 5 kilos overweight!

Mum replied immediately. “Don’t worry about shedding those 5 kilos while you’re on holiday. You can think about it when you return home’!

My sister responded, ‘Mum – I think Anu means her bags and not her own weight’! If you heard a loud peal of laughter going off in 3 different countries in 3 different continents, that was us! My Mum, my sisters and I having a good laugh over her mistake!

I replied “As for my own weight – that’s more like a good 10 kilos over! “

Mum wrote back promptly! ‘Don’t worry, Anu. You and your 10 extra kilos are all welcome. Waiting for you’! When I finally reached Sri Lanka, we all had a further laugh about my Mum’s (natural) mistake about those extra kilos.

Extra baggage! We all have it in some form, don’t we? I would love to shed 10 kilos from my person but find it hard to muster up sufficient self control to stick to a diet. Perhaps one day soon, I will do it! What about us Writers? A diarrhoea of words is usually a sign of bad writing isn't it? We Writers need to constantly chop off sentences or words to make our writing tight, succinct and more readable. I don’t know how it is with you – but I struggle with this. With having too many words in my writing. I have to keep going over and over my work in order to make it much much better than the initial draft. Thankfully I love editing my own work and enjoy having a 2nd and 3rd and 4th look into it. Chopping off a sentence there! Adding a more suitable word there. Revising our work can be a lot of fun!

Of course the problem of too much baggage applies not just in Writing – it applies to us as Christians too, doesn’t it? What kind of baggage need I shed today? Of recent months, God has been challenging me more and more about my character. Have I allowed His Holy Spirit to work on me? Recently Asta reminded us that we Christian Writers have a ‘Holy Calling”. Thanks Asta! You are so right. I’d like to add to that. We also have a “Calling to Holiness” don’t we? A calling to become the people of God that He has created us to be. God calls me to be not just a Christian Writer, but also a Woman after His own heart. How else can I communicate His truth to others? I need to be ‘walking the walk’ so I can ‘talk the talk’! Don’t you agree?

And so….. I can think of many kinds of baggage that has needed to come off my own life at different points in my journey! Selfishness, pride, unforgiveness? Laziness, greed, indifference? Do those words ring any bells? How about anxiety, self centeredness and slander? Disobedience, fear, rebellion? Oh dear… the list does go on and on and on!

What kind of baggage is God asking me to offload today? Editing my stories is painstaking and needs to be done and re-done many times over. Editing myself is another matter. A life time exercise! Something that only the Master Editor could cope with doing. It must grieve Him often, that despite all his editing, He continues to find fresh flaws creeping into the person I am! Hebrews 12:14 reminds me that holiness is not an option. It is in fact, an essential part of my walk with God.

1 Peter 1:15 tells us that God calls us to be holy. 1 Peter 2:9 adds to it. “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

It would be wonderful when The Amazing One and Only Designer-Creator-Editor who writes our stories puts down His heavenly pen with a flourish, looks at us with a satisfied smile, the love-light dancing in His eyes and says ‘’Well done thou good and faithful Image-bearers. You are exactly as I planned you to become. Enter into the joy of my Kingdom’!

Wouldn’t that be something worth striving for?

Holy Calling

Do you ever wonder what impact your writing has had or is having on the public? The feedback I have had for 'Time to Shine' (co-authored/ co-edited with Jenny Baxter, along with some lovely contributors who had their work previously published in Christian Woman magazine) has mainly come from book reviews or friends, or friends of friends. The feedback has been pleasing but has never quite had the impact on me that a recent one has had.

A customer, I have never met before, came into the library where I work casually and totally floored me. She was looking at my name badge, as I processed her books, and said,"That name... did you write a book?" It was my 5 second moment of fame - and my work colleagues congratulated me (and ribbed me)!!! Someone had recognized my name as the name of a writer!

It was a lovely moment. But fame isn't important, though perhaps it can help with publishing. What was important to me was that this lovely young mother treasures her copy of our book. This book that was published five years ago, and conceived eight years ago (and a great many of the stories that Jenny and I had selected had been written many years before that!). She has it sitting on her bedside table and returns to it over and over again. She told me the stories of the women in the book were a huge encouragement to her. May God bless those women who once felt compelled to write their stories for that magazine.

It is a great reminder that what we put down on paper is ministry - it is the work of God. Surely it is holy. Do we ever recognize it as such? How often do we think we aren't up to it? Or we question the value of what we have to say?

This encouragement came at just the right time for me. For almost three years now I have been working on a manuscript, a unique collaboration with someone very special. There was a time when I walked away from it because I felt vulnerable and uncertain, but it has a message that is very close to my heart and I know God wants me to stick with it. God also brought on board a close friend, who is a well published author (30 plus books) and editor, who kindly edited it for me (free of charge)- as a gesture of friendship and belief in my work.

As we are getting nearer now to submitting our work to a publisher it may be just the time for me to trust that God will use my faithfulness and that of my friend. Maybe it is indeed time to recognize this writing I do as a holy calling. I remember saying to Jenny as we worked on 'Time to Shine' - "God will use our availability and obedience above any skills we might or might not have". He called us and we responded and then one day a young mum with a terrible cold pushed a pram into a country library and delivered a message I needed to hear.

Thanks be to God.