Good morning…
At our Writers’ Group gathering this week, we enjoyed a delightful dinner together under outdoor ceiling fans. When it was my time to share, I heard myself say, “Well, the big thing for me is that God has changed my heart as a writer.” Meeting one year ago in the final week of May, everyone in the group remembered me saying, “I cannot wait for the Summertime Devotional to come out so I can take three months off from writing daily.” I admitted, “I love the break every summer. There is no way I could write every morning all year round.” That was my adamant, big “I” statement last spring: “I do NOT want to write in the summer months.”
For those new to our online community, for the past twelve years I have written an original manuscript for a new 90-day Summertime Devotional each spring. For the first ten years, I gifted these manuscripts to the church and they self published books to hand out to our church family on Mother’s Day morn. For the final two of those years, the church printed hard copies and offered an online version of the daily devotional. Then, in the last two years, the devotional was streamlined to an online-only version. Annually, starting each Valentine’s Day, I would begin receiving your recommendations about which school-year posts to re-run over the summer. By working diligently for March, April, and May, I would gift the church a complete manuscript of our favorite blogs, and the Creative Arts department would pre-program morning messages for June, July, and August. I, along with over a thousand subscribers, would enjoy revisiting one beloved blog post each day. The Summertime Devotional would bless our inboxes at 3:00 am, and I was like you, resting in the haven of home, savoring a spark of God’s Spirit each morning. My big “I” loved sleeping in late during the lazy days of summer and taking a break from writing each morning.
Last May things changed. After years of personal resistance and growing encouragement from my husband, my closest friends, and our monthly Writers’ Group, I felt God finally pushing us to add the gratitude gift tab to our SueToYou.com website. This tiny tab in the upper right corner of our website freely offers you as subscribers a way to express gratitude to me for the many hours I spend writing, editing, and discerning daily messages while financially offsetting the ongoing cost of our written word ministry, a ministry blossoming in the early hours before my church work begins. After posting this new opportunity to “give while you receive,” I was shocked to hit a wall of disapproval. Some viewed the optional gratitude gift tab as a conflict of interest. My big “I” felt hurt, confused, embarrassed, stepping out in faith only to face criticism.
Over the last year, we have further separated our written word ministry from my work as Women’s Ministry Director, which includes discontinuing the tradition of our Summertime Devotional. This spring, for the first time in thirteen years, I have not crafted a manuscript of our favorite school-year posts to gift to the church, but instead I am trusting God to inspire for us a fresh message each morning. The idea of writing 365 days of the year felt impossible to me one year ago today, but gradually, bit by bit, God has quietly changed my heart. This summer fresh blog posts will continue to bloom freely each day. I feel joy, hope, excitement as I sense my big “I” dying to drop new seeds of a yearlong, written word ministry, harnessing the power of four little “i’s” that define the unique gift of our online community: inspired, intimate, interactive, in-the-moment.
For me, this is a bittersweet change of heart. Bittersweet. Sweet, because God is offering us freedom to expand in expressive, new ways. Bitter, because I will miss the tradition of receiving our Summertime Devotional, revisiting with you old favorite posts all summer long. As our big “I” dies gradually, what initially feels like a costly casualty over time paves the way to God’s abundant, new creation.
It is a fact that a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die before it can grow and produce much more wheat. If it never dies, it will never be more than a single seed (John 12:24, ERV).
…Sue…
