Finish Well

Reflecting 1

Finish Well is the title of one of the daily devotionals in Cara Whitney’s Unbridled Faith: 100 Devotions from the Horse Farm.

As I perused it the other day, I snickered. “Finish well,” I thought. “How about finishing at all?” I have numerous projects in the starting stage. Some have one line. Others have several paragraphs. A couple are over 5,000 words. Others have a few hundred.

What happened? Life, for one thing. I’ve gone through a year of personal, spiritual, and relational change and growth. Writing took a back seat. Heck, sometimes it fell out of the car. But no matter what I was going through, it would circle back with a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in my ear, “Remember me.”

An idea would come into my head. Or a scene would materialize. I’d work on it for a while. When I returned to it, what seemed like a great idea or concept would lie there flat as a three-day-old pancake. The spark was gone. I’d work on one for a little bit, then another, but I couldn’t bring any of them back to life. I might write a few sentences, maybe a whole page. Or I edit and tweak, usually, a sure-fire method to get me writing again. But the impetus would peter out.

The thoughts crossed my mind, “Maybe I’m finished as a writer. Maybe I should just wrap it up.”

But God…

At a conference last fall, I talked with some fellow writers who I’ve known for years and whose counsel I respect. They were prayerfully encouraging. One suggested I ask God what He wanted me to write.

So, I did. And got no answer. Or at least nothing I could hear anyway. There’s always the possibility, He did respond, but I didn’t want to listen to it.

One morning recently, I woke up at 5:00 a.m. I prayed for more sleep. Instead, God gave me instructions. One was to submit my favorite completed manuscript to a specific agent. Another was to reconnect with the writing community by joining a critique group. The final instruction was to seek out more opportunities to edit and mentor other writers. This is something I’ve done since my first book was published.

I understand now God is telling me I’m not finished. He wants me to finish my stories, to reach out to the writing community again. He still has things for me to do, and he wants me to finish well.

Have you felt like you’re done pursuing your dream even though it hasn’t come to full fruition yet?

Take some time and seek God, talk to him, ask him what he wants you to do. Be prepared to obey. It may take some time to hear from him. Not because he’s slow. Sometimes, we’re too slow. Or he needs to arrange things we don’t even know about. Our first steps in writing were done in faith in him. So will the next ones.

No matter what he tells you, you can trust in the fact that he wants you to finish well.

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