Credit to whoever made this amazing image!! It is so nostalgic for me and I don’t know why!!A while ago, I learned a difficult lesson. In fact, it was a lesson a long time coming.
As someone who is a bit of an overachiever, when I get stuck in life, I tend to go a little crazy. It’s a wonderful quality (not!). For a long time, whenever things weren’t going the way I’d hoped, I’d get upset and start questioning God about why I was where I was in life.
“Why am I not doing [insert thing here]?” “Lord, why is he or she successful and I’m not?”
Sure, maybe it’s a lack of faith or a lack of trust, but I am only human. When things don’t work out for a long period of time, I tend to start wondering if I am ever going to get out of the bog. David felt the same in many of the Psalms so I’m in good company, I suppose.
But I don’t want to stay in the bog.
A few weeks ago, while I was in my church’s prayer room, I was praying about this very problem when God impressed something upon me that was remarkably clear:
You only see one book, I am writing a series.
As a writer, this was in my own language.
When I write Camp Chronicles, I see the entire series. My readers, however, only see the books I’ve released so far. They might wonder what happens next, why a particular character made a certain decision, or how something that seems insignificant now will eventually fit into the larger story.
But I already know! I know where the characters are going, what challenges they’ll face, and how the seemingly disconnected pieces will eventually come together. What might seem confusing or even frustrating in Book One might make perfect sense by the end.
And that was God’s point.
I am not omniscient (thank goodness), and I have no idea what the next chapter of my life will hold, much less the next book. Yet I have a habit of judging my entire life by the chapter I’m currently living, as though the story has already been told and the ending decided. But God is writing a series, and I’m critiquing the plot after reading one book.
Only a short time later, God taught me a second lesson on this same topic. I happened to come across a rather negative interpretation of something I had written, and it caught me completely off guard. What frustrated me wasn’t necessarily that someone disliked what I’d written—everyone is entitled to their own opinions—but that the conclusions being drawn seemed to overlook the larger story and the context in which everything had been written. And attributed the character’s opinions to me. Yikes!
As a writer, I found this particularly frustrating. How could one small part of a story be used to draw conclusions about the whole thing or about me, the writer? How could everything surrounding it be overlooked so easily?
And then God reminded me: Ronan, this is exactly what you do with your own life and My plan.
Oof!! Yep. I was doing the very thing that I was frustrated about. I was taking one moment, isolating it from everything else, and using it to draw conclusions about the Author. I was overlooking all the things God had already done in my life, all the ways He had provided, all the prayers He had answered, and all the promises He had made. Instead, I was fixating on the one thing that wasn’t going the way I wanted. And yet, all writers know that a single chapter cannot tell you everything about a story.
Proverbs 16:9 tells us, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
We can plan, prepare, work hard, and pursue the things we believe God has called us to do. None of those things are wrong. But at the end of the day, when we’re walking with God, He gets the final say.
And thank goodness for that.
So, my encouragement to my readers is this: Life isn’t always perfect. It isn't always pretty, and it certainly doesn't always unfold the way we imagined it would.
But never mistake the book, the chapter, the moment you’re in for the entire series. You don’t have to know how every plot line resolves, how every loose end gets tied up, or what happens in the next book.
That’s the Author’s job.
Let Him write your arc. And be at peace.
xx rj
