BE a Book

You know how sometimes you look at your life and wonder what you've accomplished?

Birthdays do that to me. For the past few weeks I've been thinking about the direction of my life. I've shared before about my dream to have a book published someday, but it's a huge mountain. Ginormous, humongous, colossal. With the glut of writers out there, the odds of becoming a published author is similar to winning the lottery. Everybody and their Aunt Sally wants to write a book.

Plus it takes a lot of time and a major commitment to write. I'm a stay-at-home-mom with children in school all day, yet somehow my days are very full. There never seems to be enough time. Something else is always more pressing, pulling me away. I have to fight and sacrifice other things to go beyond writing blog posts and Bible study e-mails. It isn't easy. Not at all.

I get discouraged. Should I shed activities to devote more time to the impossible dream? Or am I wasting time which could be spent on more worthy pursuits? What am I doing with my life?! People ask, "What do you do?" and I'm at a loss for words. Can I say I'm a writer if I have no publishing credits? Does anything I do have significance when I can't identify it in ten words or less?

Enter my wonderful, deep, insightful friend who knows how I kick myself around about this. "Tami, it's better to BE a book than to write one," she said, "I know it is your dream, but just know you are living the life God wants you to for Him. Jesus shows up in you very clearly! You will leave a legacy!"

clearly you are an epistle of Christ . . . written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.

2 Corinthians 3:3

I AM a book. Wow.

She made me cry. Have I been so focused on the task that I've missed what God's already doing? My goal in publishing is to point people to God. If my LIFE does that, does it matter if there is an actual physical book with my name on it?

I am a book. YOU are a book. We do more for the kingdom of God by how we live than by the blather we expel. We encounter way more people in our lifetimes than our words will ever reach. It's better to BE a book.

Have you wished to do great things for God? Do you long to make a mark on your world? Have you worked so hard on the goal you've missed the way He uses you already?

Don't miss the forest for the trees, friends. Keep pursuing that dream, but don't discount the journey as wasted time. The roads you travel write your story.

Make every day count. BE a book.