Here's a shot of an orb spider and his (her?) web. It was spun on the clothesline one night last week. I think these are the coolest things. I love when I find one. And I love that I could actually take a picture of it that turned out good enough you can tell what it is! (If you click on it, you'll get a bigger, slightly clearer picture)The funny thing is that I was talking about burnout to one of my friends last week, likening it to a spider spinning his web out of his very guts. When the web is spun, the spider is literally empty. Then the next morning, I found this web. I know writing has been compared by others to web spinning, both in the complexity of the stories, and in the fact that you use something inside yourself to do it. And when you are done, you can be emotionally, mentally and even physically "empty."
Sometimes the web doesn't work out for whatever reason (eg, it was constructed in the wrong place) and has to be redone. To really bring home the point, right after I took this shot, Quigley ran under the web and tore free on of the lines that anchored it to the ground, effectively destroying the whole thing. It was a little bit shocking to me that it could have so easily and casually been destroyed.
But that is the world we live in. And it's cool to go from that to the fact that what we have in Christ is not going to be destroyed. The anchor line there is secure and nothing will ever be able to destroy it.
This has been a very cool day, literally (it's rained all day) and figuratively. I had a lot of good reminders that none of this is up to me. God is the one who does the promoting, He's the one who's going to do the tasks He's assigned me, and I should slamming all my cares, all of them, every-stinkin'-one ALL of them on Him. And then stop fretting about them, stop thinking about them.
1 Peter 5:6,7 Humble yourself therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting ALL your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.
In last Friday's lesson, guest pastor Rory Clark pointed out that the English "He cares for you" does not do justice to the real meaning in the Greek idiom. A better translation would be, "He considers all your problems to be His responsibility." Pastor Rory had us personalize it:
"God considers (insert your problem here)
Thus...
God considers Quigley's dietary indiscretions to be His responsibility.
God considers the fate of my books to be His responsibility.
God considers the writing of Enclave to be His responsibility.
How cool is that? Speaking of Enclave, I did email my editor and she called me this morning. We had a great talk, and I am so blessed to be writing for Bethany House. Sometimes I can't believe what a great deal I've got going here! Anyway, I have a new deadline, Nov 30. And I have a fair degree of confidence now that this book is going to work out okay. Already I'm seeing great improvement, and more and more ideas are rolling in, more and more connections are being made. What I want now is to find the elements that are going to cause me to fall in love with this book. With Arena it didn't happen until one of the later drafts (maybe the next to last one), and really I've only just begun to work on Enclave, despite the fact I've been "working" on it for a year.
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