Have you ever had a pivotal moment that seemed to reset your life's trajectory? A moment so life changing it feels nothing will ever be the same again? In my short time so far on Earth I have had two such moments - the first being when my mother died of cancer in 2010, and the second being when God woke me from a deep sleep in 2018 with a dream that was so real it couldn't have been drummed up by my imagination alone.
That is where this story begins. Not with my mother's death - that is a whole different tale - but with a dream so tiny, yet so significant, that it launched me down a detour on the path of life that the route back to what had been before 2018 is gone.
The dream came to me in January of 2018. It wasn't a long dream, but it was a vivid dream. A dream that had taste. A dream that had smell. A dream that had texture. A dream that was even more realistic than the waking world. In fact, in my life I had only had one other dream like that and that was when I dreamt about my mother the week after she passed. Unlike that dream about my mother - which brought an immense amount of healing to my grieving heart - this dream was no less vivid.
For a week, I couldn't stop thinking about the dream. I knew from my walk with God that that meant there was probably something deeper going on. Even more, I could - and still can to this day - recount every word spoken, movement the characters took, every smell, every taste, every texture, and every sound I heard in the dream.
So I asked God on the way home from work one day what the dream meant. It had to mean something, right? His response:
"It's a book."
A book! Of course! God had been speaking to me about writing for about a year before the dream, and now I had a direction to go in. However, not the one I had thought I would be headed down. I had been so sure when I heard him speak to me in 2017 about writing, that the first book I would write would be my story. All the detours, dead ends, wrong ways, and bad exits I had taken in my walk before I finally surrendered and let Jesus be my chauffeur. Instead, God used those three little words to very subtly but deliberately reroute the path I thought I was on.
Now knowing the purpose behind the dream, I decided to begin brainstorming and learning just what this world was that God had shown me. I started with the dream. I wrote it out in detail, and very quickly it became apparent that there was more to dream than I had initially thought. As it flowed out of me and onto paper, the world the dream had transported me to began to take shape. It also became apparent to me that through this dream God had not given me one book to write, but five.
Five. Five books. I haven't even written one before.
Are you sure Lord? Am I really the one you want for this task? What if my voice isn't strong enough? What if I can't focus enough to do this story credit? These were all the questions that swirled around my head as I took in the task before me. Admittedly, they continued to swirl around my head once I started writing the first book, throughout the initial publishing process (I will write about that in the next post), and after the book went to print. Even now, nearly 3 years later, these questions still haunt me.
Writing, and not just writing Christian Speculative Fiction as I do, is a daunting task. It is lonely at times and at other times full. There are moments of real doubt, but God always found a way to shine through those moments with a kind word from a friend, or a new person who wanted to read my work. Those are the moments God used to remind me of who He has called me to be and the task He has entrusted me with.
To this day, I am still not sure if the world He gave me to pen had already been there, locked away someplace in the secret corners of my mind, or if He downloaded the story straight into my mind. In the end, it does not matter how it got there. What matters most to me is that I tell the story well and that I steward this mantle that has been placed upon my shoulders. In the end, it is His story that He is telling through me.
My journey is not over. This first book's journey is not over, even though I did self-publish through an umbrella company - an experience I will share in the next post. The dream that God gave me in 2018 is still as fresh in my mind now as it was then, a reminder of what was tasked to me. This story is one that is too important not to tell, and I am humbled and honored that I was chosen to tell it.
I am also humbled and honored to invite you, dear reader, to join me on this journey. It will be one heck of a ride.
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