In the summer of 2012, I was nearing the end of my deployment to Afghanistan. I was keeping a journal at the time, and this is what I wrote:
And now, I've prayed as boldly, as fervently, as I know how, with conviction and side-prayers for belief, that God would make me a Christian writer to the world, that He would make me His voice in literature, [...] that He would do so completely and quickly, that all would know He is Lord, or at least I would know that it is He who did these things. [...] In thus praying, I invoke the promise of John 14:13-14: 'And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it." Of course, I also have to quote Mark 9:24: "[...] Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief." All things are possible with God, this I will grasp fiercely. All things are possible, even that I, [...] who doesn't have the time, nor the discipline, even so that I, of all people, can be used of God in this way that I have so long desired, but never pursued.
I found myself almost exactly one year later, having done almost exactly nothing. But I felt the stirrings of poetry in my soul again. I caught a glimpse of what I had been missing when I discovered Art House America. And I understood what Sara Groves meant in her appropriately unfinished song, Right Now.
I'm finished feeling like God is pulling me in two different directions; I don't need to abandon one calling to pursue the other. I can create right where I am. Right now.
So can you.
