Unfinished: Waiting for What’s Next

“Not scared to say it, I used to be the one
Preachin’ it to you, that you could overcome
I still believe it, but it ain’t easy
‘Cause that world I painted, where things just all work out
It started changing and I started having doubts
And it got me so down…”

-Mandisa, Unfinished

Turns out Mandisa and I are practically the same person.  Who knew?

Remember last month when I wrote to you about What to do with the Death of a Dream?  It’s not that I was being disingenuous at that time, but I have a confession: The reason I felt compelled to share that message with you is because I am in a place where I am struggling with believing in my dreams right now.  Those words I wrote to you were just as much a reminder to myself.

I don’t know at what point I stopped believing in my dreams. But it happened.  And I didn’t even realize it had until I found myself crying into the pages of Mark Batterson’s Circle Maker, unable to bring myself to believe his words within.

Our enemy is sly, y’all.

I have found, in my life, the easiest places for him to attack me are in areas I have already overcome and told other people about, things I’ve even helped other people overcome in their own lives.  Preachin it to them… 

Because then he can plague me with these thoughts, Oh no! what if people find out I’m a hypocrite?!  What if they find out I don’t have it all together, after I said I did?!  I mean, I’m the girl who signs books, “your story isn’t over yet!”

That’s what Mandisa is talking about.  I’m sure she had a lot of those same thoughts between her 2013 album “Overcomer” and her most recent, “Out of the Dark”, which includes the track above. The lyrics that come next in her song Unfinished, map a blueprint for us in this place:

“But I picked myself back up, I started tellin’ me,
‘No, my God’s not done, makin’ me a masterpiece’

He’s still working on me,

He started something good and I’m gonna believe it
He started something good and He’s gonna complete it.

So I celebrate the Truth: His work in me ain’t through
I’m just unfinished.”

Unfinished

Can I tell you something I’ve come to embrace – dearly – in this season of my life?  My mentor, Jennifer Beckham, has been saying it for years, but I’m just starting to grasp it for myself, and it gives me permission to breathe: I’m still a work in progress.

Unfinished.

Which means I haven’t arrived. Even if I did write a book about coming out of one pit in my life, that doesn’t mean I’ll spend the rest of my life on a mountaintop.

And I have to stop beating myself up every time I feel like I take a step backward. (Can I get an amen?)

There is an interesting season after the realization of a dream or a pursuit, when it’s easy to feel lost and confused.  An ok-what-do-I-do-next? season.

Subconsciously, I knew this before publishing my book. I think that’s why it took me two years to actually get it out after I wrote it…. some of that may have been deliberate procrastination.

I foresaw this line of thinking for myself: Ok, I have dedicated the last 2 ½ years of my life to this one thing, this one goal, this one mission. It gives me life and energy and focus. It allows me to walk every day on a clear path of obedience toward the mark God has called me.  It’s me literally living in my purpose.  And once it’s over, once the goal is accomplished, once the book is out and on the shelf, what do I do now? What will I do with my time and my life to feel significant and purposed?

What I didn’t foresee was how indescribably HARD these thoughts and emotions would hit me.  And how hollow it would make me feel.

It’s only in writing this I called to mind a quote I heard years ago, “Never let a dream come true steal your dream.” 

Meaning, don’t let accomplishing one thing keep you from accomplishing everything else God has created you for.

With each dream realized, you’ve got to set new dreams and goals for yourself.  And I have not done that. At all.

(Sidenote: I acknowledge what I’m saying means I have been finding my significance in my work for God, rather than in my relationship with Him. A mindset I don’t think I understand how to transition out of yet. But that’s a whole other psychological and spiritual evaluation for another day.)

Dreams Do Come True

When I launched my book in November of last year, I was at an all-time high – it was the realization of a lifelong dream come true.  I did not anticipate the series of emotional crashes that came next.

As I type this in retrospect, I think I see the dream-thieving pieces come together:

The month of my book launch, I expected to sell a certain number of copies and I came in at a fraction of that. I was devastated.

I sullenly reported the numbers to a friend in the industry and she told me my numbers were actually really great for a self-published author, which led me to doing some research.  I found out most nonfiction books today – traditionally-published or self-published – never sell more than 3,000 copies in their lifetime.  Usually no more than 300 in the first year.

So my numbers weren’t that bad after all, it was my expectations that were off. And I found solace in this fact at the time.

Looking back, that was exactly what my enemy wanted. For me to lower my expectations, and to keep lowering them. And keep lowering them.  Until eventually, I didn’t expect much of anything above “average” for my future at all.

I had relegated myself to “this is just the way it is in the publishing world today” and I was “right on track” – with average.

I have been anti-average my entire life. Repulsed by it even.

There is a delicate balance I surf between contentment and wanting more – feeling like God is calling me to more. But lately, it’s been just been discontentment and disbelief all around.

I find myself teetering on a ledge between believing for more, one more time, or just….settling.

It feels too hard and too painful to get my hopes up again; to stretch my faith and to see a vision beyond where I am now. It seems much easier to just settle for how far I’ve come.

You can settle at all different levels you know. There’s a temptation for it all your life, a pressure just to give in and give up hope. You can settle at $20,000 when it feels too hard to believe for $40,000, you can settle for $40,000 when it seems like $80,000 is out of reach, you can even settle at $100,000 or a million.

You can settle for 500 books sold when believing for 5,000 seems impossible. Which is the place I found myself.

So by the time I stumbled across Mark Batterson’s book, The Circle Maker, buried in an ebay sale pile of my mom’s, my belief and expectations were so low that the author’s words were a shocking wake-up call.

Inside, Batterson tells the backstory leading up to the launch of his first book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.  He writes about a faith-stretching financial commitment he made and how God came through on it BIG time:

A faith promise is an amount of money pledged to missions above and beyond the tithe.  It’s not based on a budget; it’s based on faith.  Honestly, we [my wife and I] had no idea how we’d be able to give the amount of money we pledged…

…On the day we made the pledge, July 31^st, 2005, I blogged what I believed: “I have a holy anticipation that I can’t even put into words. I can’t wait to see how God provides what we promised.”   Two months later on October 4, 2005, I landed my first book contract.  The advance on that four-book deal was THIRTY TIMES GREATER than the pledge we had made.

…I was thrilled about getting the book contract, but I was even more thrilled about writing the largest check we had ever written for a kingdom cause. 

In December 2010, he signed another book contract, the gift he and his wife gave on that advance was THIRTY TIMES LARGER than the original faith promise they had made five years before!

What miraculous provision!!

I read more of the story: In the fall of 2006, a week before his first book was set to release, Batterson was speaking at a men’s conference when he asked for God’s blessing on the book. He writes:

I was painfully aware of the fact that 95% of books don’t sell five thousand copies, but I prayed a circle around the book and asked God to put a multiplication anointing on it.  I mustered as much faith as I could and asked God to help it sell 25,000 copies.  Of course I threw in the obligatory “if it be Your will” at the end.  That tagline may sound spiritual, but it was less a submission to God’s will and more a profession of doubt.  If you aren’t careful, the will of God can become a cop-out if things don’t turn out the way you want.

Reading that paragraph, hot tears streamed down my cheeks. I realized I couldn’t even begin to believe my book would sell 25,000 copies. The revelation was startling me. When had my dreams gotten so small?  When had I lost my faith in the God who called me to write this book in the first place?  When had I stopped trusting Him and His power?

“It’s easy to give up on your dreams, on miracles, on promises.
We lose heart, we lose patience, we lose faith. And like a slow leak, it often happens without us even knowing it…” – Mark Batterson

Reading those words, I felt like God was begging me to believe Him for such a miracle.  To trust that He could to the same for me.

This is the same God who restores sight to the blind, who brings people back from the dead, who created the entire universe from His mouth and His hands. It should be easy for me to believe He can get a book into the right hands at the right time, enough times, right?

But I had settled for that cop-out Batterson referenced, with these nagging questions in my mind, Maybe it wasn’t God’s will for my book after all. Maybe I heard Him wrong. Maybe I should have waited for a publisher to pick it up, instead of being stubborn and forcing it to fruition myself. Maybe the timing was off. Maybe I didn’t launch it right… 

Guys, can I tell you something?  Following God, and following your dreams, is not easy. 

I don’t have an answer to the question, “How do you know when it’s God or when it’s you in your own head?” Because I still ask myself that all.the.time.

All I can do is try to get it right each time, and trust that He will make it right even if I mess it up.  Because I do know this: my heart is always in the right place of obedience, even if my ears aren’t always hearing crystal-clear.

I’m still a work in progress. Unfinished. He’s still working on me.

So that’s the place I rest in.

This week I thought to myself, I don’t even know how to dream anymore. Which made me cry all over again. And feel lost and hopeless.

Here’s what I’ve learned (over and over again), when I try to do things myself, I get exhausted and overwhelmed and it doesn’t turn out so well. But, when I ask God into the equation and rely on His help, I get to relax and it all works out.

So here’s the first step I took:  I wrote to God in my prayer journal that He would have to teach me how to dream again. That He would have to show me a new dream. And show me if my old dreams, that are hard to believe in now, are things that were never from Him that I should let go of, or if that’s really what He wants for me.

And because my heart is rooted in obedience, I won’t take another step forward until I hear from Him.

So if you need me, I’ll be here, writing to you and waiting for what’s next.

 

Is there a dream that God wants to resurrect [in your life]? Is there some promise you need to reclaim? Is there some miracle you need to start believing for again? 

The reason many of us give up too soon is because we feel like we failed if God doesn’t answer our prayer. The only way you can fail is if you stop praying.” – Mark Batterson