The first source of my confusion is this. I finished writing a novel in the last month. Now I had always thought that day would be one of celebration for me, but somehow the day was oddly empty. The book was sloppily written. It had terrible writing, and a poor plotline. Though I had set out to write something great I had come back with a poor piece of work. My disappointment was huge. This was my first book and I couldn't even consider publishing it without rewriting the whole thing. I was so confused. How could this happen? I'm considered a great writer. I'm in a 300 level English class as a Freshman! Just the other day my lit. professor told me if I'm not an English major I should be. So how could I fail so badly?
The thing I hadn't realized is that I had set into the book without God's help. Writing that I had asked God to help me with turned out amazing. I not only didn't talk to God about this book, I ignored Him and completely forgot about Him. I made one reference in the book (almost as if to say...see I included you!) about the God of Justice and how a young slave had been freed thanks to prayers to him. Oh and I named four of my characters Matthew, Marc, Luke and John. That's good enough, right God?
But it wasn't. That book had so much potential for God to do something with it. And that's not to say the story is completely irredeemable. It will just have to be scrapped and it will take much longer to get it to his potential.
So now I’m concentrating my time on finishing one of the best books God has ever given me. It’s sort of a modern fantasy. When I describe it to people I explain it’s like Narnia because of its allegorical nature, but in reality it isn’t so light and kid friendly as Narnia. It’s sort of a mix of Narnia and Harry Potter. It’s pretty dark, but it is Christian. It takes place in the modern world (our world) but it has a magical element and an allegory beneath the real story.
God has worked amazing miracles through this story. It didn’t start out as Christian at all and certainly not as an allegory. In fact it didn’t become an allegory until about chapter 12, but I didn’t have to revise much because it worked as out. God created a miracle when I randomly named my character Jean Chasseur and then found out that the man recorded in history to have defeated this strange wolf creature the book kind of centered around was named Jean Chastel. God simply did amazing things with that book and I did my best to communicate daily with him about it and where it was going. It wasn’t tainted with sexual humor or bad language or other things that some of my books struggle with. It was fairly well written and it had a cool plotline that worked. For a sneak peak of this book look on my writing page. It’s the first one listed A Path through the Setting Sun.
So I’m sort of leaving my first finished book behind. It can be my first finished book, but this next one will be my first finished book with God.
Another thing that has been troubling me a lot lately is the possibility of what God wants me to do with my life.
I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I was in third grade, or maybe even before I’ve loved the thought of writing books. In fourth grade I attended a writing conference, and after that I was history.
Nowadays, however, I recognize that it is not practical to live as a writer. For that reason I have made it my plan to become an editor or publisher and then later go back to school to get my masters and doctorate so I can teach at the university. But lately God has been putting something else on my heart.
On my blog there is a page marked Social Justice. This has been a subject that has touched my heart for a long time.
I just finished up a class about justice and global poverty. The class brought up many new issues to me, but it also brought back some of the old ones that I have always been interested in working to prevent. The most prominent was that of sex trafficking and even more for child sex slavery.
On my own time I watched a documentary called The Cutting Edge: The Child Sex Trade. The documentary is not for the faint of heart. It is not horribly graphic in its descriptions, but it does describe. I felt a little bit sick after watching it actually. The movie focuses especially on young boys who are trafficked in Romania. Oftentimes people assume that trafficking victims are women and girls, but this showed that the sex trade affects both sexes.
Trying to think of the moment that struck me the most is difficult. In one part a twelve year old homeless boy describes to the camera how a man pulled him into his apartment and used him before throwing him out the window. The young boy showed an ugly scar on his head from the fall. After explaining he went and threw up in the corner of the subway station where he spends a lot of his time. Just talking about it made him sick. It was one of the few times in the movie when the boys actually opened up and made it clear that even if they act like everything in their life is ok it’s not. They always put on a smiling façade for the camera, but after awhile it would come off. The twelve year old was the most dramatic, but another boy when asked if he liked his “work” hesitated a little before saying “no, but I need money”. A third was shown pictures of himself on a porn website. When asked how he was feeling he made a strained face and said “not so nice.”
Perhaps an even more striking thing for me was when the man in charge of the documentary pulled over in Italy and had a young boy come over to sell himself. Now, this was disturbing enough in itself, but even more upsetting was when the boy’s father came over to help work out a price. A fourteen year old boy was being pimped by his own father. The sense of injustice I felt was nearly overwhelming, but the man redeemed himself a little. It’s the poverty of the family that’s causing him to take such a measure. It’s either sell the boy or starve. Even in doing such a vial thing the father was protective. Even if he was giving his boy over for a half hour to a stranger he made sure to try to protect the boy as best he could. He took the license plate number and said he would call the police if they weren’t back in the allotted time. He also made stipulations about how the boy was to be treated. The man in the documentary ran into several other cases where family members were selling a boy. The youngest was probably ten, and was being pimped by his older brothers.
My picture of people selling these children was changed slightly. There is more than one case out there. The movie showed the scenario of children being sold by their own families to raise profits, but showed that perhaps these people aren’t as heartless as they may first appear. It’s still wrong, but if these people are struggling so much for food, what else are they supposed to do? It showed me that once again poverty is often a root problem to all the others, perhaps the reason Jesus made such a big deal of talking about feeding the hungry and clothing the poor. The other case for prostitution shown was that of a greedy lustful man whose only desire was to collect young children from himself and his customers. This scenario also needs to be stopped through better laws and more prevention. At the same time helping to get children like the ones shown in the documentary off the street will help as well because the children will be less vulnerable and less likely to agree to sell themselves for money.
But I’ve ranted for long enough. The main point is that this documentary once again returned me to my idea of being involved with social justice somehow…doing something to stop the horrible abuse of these children. So again I feel like God is putting this on my heart, but I’m still confused about what he wants me to do about it.
So what’s the point of this blog post? It’s simply to talk about what God’s doing in my life. Confusing me. Well, it sure seems like it. For now I’m just listening and waiting and hoping God will send a clear message sometime soon so if I need to change my major I can.
I know I must be patient. I’ve been reading verses that have been encouraging me to wait.
“In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.” Psalm 5: 3
“In the morning, LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.” Psalm 27:14
“I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry.” Psalm 40: 1
“I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.” Psalm 130: 5
“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” Isaiah 30: 18
“But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.” Micah 7: 7.
So even in my confusion I dedicate myself to prayer and hope that God will answer me soon in asking if this documentary was merely something to open my eyes to the injustice of the world, or if it is truly a calling to do something. In the meantime I continue with my writing the right way, with God’s help. Let this last verse be my plea:
“LORD, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.” Psalm 38:15
