What Happens When You Offer To Carry A Stranger’s Luggage (And a give-away to INSPIRE you!)

I met Rachel in a parking lot in the first hour of the first day of my first serious writer’s conference.

I’d gone to Wheaton, IL, looking for a book deal; but God gave me something better. 

He gave me a friend.

We look back on that parking lot moment now and agree that it was a divine appointment.

We started talking the moment I offered to carry Rachel’s luggage to her dorm room, which was right next to mine, and we didn’t stop for five days. 

We learned we were incredibly different…

She is a pastor’s wife. I am a doctor’s wife.   She writes fiction and I write nonfiction. She has two kids. I have five.

…And we were very much the same

We both love words. And we both love the Author of Life.
We both love being moms and we both love being writers.
We both want our marriages to thrive and our children to fall madly in love with Jesus.
We both want to use our gifts to the glory of God but we’re not always sure how to do that.

We spent our short week together sharing publishing dreams and mommy dreams.
We swapped stories that made us curl up in laughter and howl. And stories that made us reach for the Kleenex box and grow quiet.
We learned that we share some of the same flaws. And we have a few matching strengths.
We discovered that we both have a passion for adoption and for women’s ministry. And that we’ve both considered quitting this whole writing thing. Too many times to count.

We shared a bathroom (gotta love those dorm rooms) and we shared our hearts, and by the week’s end, we’d even shared our junior high bra stories.That’s when I knew we’d be lifelong friends.

Rachel prayed over me before we parted ways and I cried the first hour of my drive home, tears of gratitude for the amazing gift I’d been given, and tears of sadness that our week together was over. 

But I knew our journey wasn’t.

From that day on we’ve prayed each other through crazy walk of motherhood and writing. We’ve spoken words of promise and hope over those dreams we hold so delicately and we’ve reminded one another that God cares about those dreams far more than we can imagine.

Maybe that’s why when I opened up my box from Amazon last week, and I lifted this beautiful book right out of the brown-paper wrapping, my knees starting knocking with joy.  

And there in my kitchen I remembered that dorm room in Wheaton, IL, and how I’d begged Rachel to let me read the first chapter of her book.

She’d handed me those crisp white pages, and had said I could read it if I’d be a ruthless editor.

But when I’d curled up on that tiny twin bed and read the first line, I’d totally forgotten about the pencil in my hand.

The story my friend had woven left me spellbound.

That  night, I’d promptly called my husband and told him, “Mark my words, I’m going to hold Rachel’s book in my hands one day soon.” 

And I was right.

Now I’ll let Rachel do the talking. I have no doubt you’ll be inspired…

 When my son was born almost thirteen years ago, I loved being a stay at home mom. Truly I did. And yet at the same time, something inside of me felt restless, like my creativity was slowly drying up.

I read a lot of novels the first year of my son’s life; I figured out how to nurse with one hand and hold a book in the other. Fifteen minutes times six times a day (or whatever it was depending on his age and mood) equals over an hour of reading time, all while bonding with my sweet baby. To this day I equate certain novels (Jewel, Someone Else’s Child) with nursing. Weird? Probably. But it worked for me. 

One evening I caught a news story on TV about a high school girl who gave birth in the bathroom during prom and afterward went out to dance again. The birth experience was still pretty fresh in my mind and I thought how in the world does someone do such a thing? This sad story haunted me and prompted a lot of what If questions—a great place to start for a writer. 

Sometime later I told my husband, “If I were ever going to write a novel this is what it’d be about…” to which he finally said, “Great. Write it.”

So I did. I clicked away while my baby napped and, in time, stared at Blues Clues. While I could have been (should have been?) scrubbing my floors, I wrote and wrote and wrote and it was so fun, so satisfying, just to pour out a story, and at the end of about six months I had a…. skeleton. The beginnings of what could be a great story. My characters were as flat as Popsicle sticks. My dialogue was didactic. I had no rhythm. It’s not that I couldn’t write, I could. (Didn’t my degree in English prove it?) But knowing how to write an A paper and knowing how to write a book—particularly a novel— are two very different things.

After sending out my manuscript to garner a few rejections, I bit the bullet and went to a writer’s conference to “find out what those experts know” where learned that I really had no idea what I was doing. So I went home, reworked scenes, fleshed out characters, asked for honest feedback, prayed for wisdom, got a few articles published, read a ton on the craft, and seriously considered quitting before I was in too deep.

Ironically, when I began writing Mother of My Son, adoption wasn’t even a blink on our radar, even though this was the theme I felt compelled to explore. During the process to bring home our sweet girl from China, I put my story away and didn’t look at it for three years.

And I loved being mom. I did, but I missed writing, missed my half-baked characters, especially now that I was bolstered with experiences to flavor my story. So I rolled up my sleeves and quietly went back to work, equipped with clarity that comes from shelving a project for so long, and experience. Mother of My Son is be no means autobiographical but it does contain a big chunk of my heart. Some of my characters were further removed from me; I had not walked in their shoes. So I got really quiet and listened to them.

Life carried on. My children grew, and I kept writing. I studied my favorite authors. I prayed. I sought feedback. I quit. A week later I unquit. And as I plodded on a hard truth began to nag: getting my book published was my goal, not a promise from God. I didn’t want to be consumed with this crazy pipedream and get stuck in the what ifs and if onlys. I didn’t want to miss out on moments of my life while I was pining away for something that might never be. Anytime we played Balderdash we used cut up pieces from various drafts of my book and I began to wonder—was this as far as my book would go? The inside of our scrap drawer? Was I “only” supposed to write for my church, my community, and magazines? And if so, would that be enough? 

Yes.

I did not arrive there easily but yes; it would be enough. If that’s what God had for me and no more, it would be enough. I pressed in harder to the Author of all grace and unclenched my fist. I learned how to hold the dream loosely and move forward. 

And then one day, twelve years after starting, after what felt like a hailstorm of no’s, I got a sweet yes.

Yes, Pelican Book Group would like to publish my novel.

After all the time and diligence, it’s delightful to hold my book and share it with readers but being published is not the Holy Grail, it does not lead to ultimate fulfillment.

That comes from God, the soul satisfier, the giver of dreams and igniter of godly passions, the source of drive and ability.

And we—we moms and wives and writers and painters and artists and gardeners and musicians—we are but clay jars without lids, holding our desires loosely, open to receive grace upon grace, and to pour it out just as freely.

 

 Mother of My Son- College student Amber Swansen gives birth alone. In desperation, she abandons the newborn, buries her secret, and attempts to get on with her life. No matter how far she runs, she can’t escape the guilt. Years later and still haunted by her past, Amber meets Beth Dilinger. Friendship blossoms between the two women, but Beth’s son is a constant, painful reminder to Amber of the child she abandoned. When heartache hits, causing Amber to grapple with the answers to life’s deeper questions, Beth stands by her side. Yet just when peace seems to be within Amber’s grasp, the truth of her past and the parentage of Beth’s son comes to light and threatens to shatter not only their worlds, but the life of the teenager they both love.

To be entered to win a free, signed copy of Mother of My Son, share this blog post via a social network (facebook, twitter, blog etc) and then tell us how you shared in the comment section, along with any other comments!

Rachel’s book is available now on Amazon or on her website where you can also view her new book trailer.