There’s a scene at the end of the newest Little Women movie. Jo looks on as the pages of her book are printed and stitched together. Her words are being published. I remember watching that scene several years ago and completely understanding the look in her eyes. She was watching a dream being fulfilled. I remember wondering if I would ever get to see the same thing.
One year ago, my own dream became reality. My first book, filled with words I labored over, was published and sent out into the world.
It’s an interesting thing to have a dream fulfilled. I don’t want to call it disappointing because that’s not right exactly. Yet, there’s a certain reality that life after a dream…is just life. It’s not as if I expected to become famous or something. I knew an unknown author from a small publisher wasn’t going to make waves in the literary world. But maybe I thought I would feel different somehow? Like maybe “published author” was a vibe or a feeling that would somehow become part of my aura? Please read the laughing emoji here as I am one hundred percent laughing at myself.
My world did change in some ways. I’ve done some podcasts, spoken at some mom groups, and have more Instagram followers, but mostly, I’m still just here being an ordinary person living an ordinary life. I’m still being summoned to wipe people’s bottoms. I’m still trying and failing to have a clean floor. Maybe that is the real dream, huh?
I’ll be honest and vulnerable for a moment and tell you that I have been looking forward to the anniversary of my book with something akin to dread. It has loomed over me a bit with a little foreboding. All I wanted was to have a book published, but then, once that happened, new pressures mounted.
I should probably have more sales…
I should probably already have another book written…
I don’t want to be a “one and done” author…What if that’s what I am?
What if I write another book and people don’t like it as much…?
What if I’m not as funny and people are expecting me to be funny now…?
Lots of people have asked me if I’m writing another book and the question has inspired something like panic. I see authors who already have another manuscript finished when their book is released. When my book was released, I was three weeks postpartum, sitting in mesh panties just trying to survive. My life since has been very full, full of homeschooling and soccer practices and breastfeeding and writing more here and teaching Bible Study at church.
People often marvel at the fact that I found time to write a book, but the real miracle will be if I find time to write another one. I mean that honestly. When I first started writing Majoring in Motherhood, I had half the kids and wasn’t homeschooling. I know it didn’t feel like I had lots of time then, but looking back now, it seems I was drowning in time. Why can’t we ever realize how much time we have when we have it?
The real question though is not do I have time to write another book, but why do I feel like I have to?
It’s a question I suppose I know the answer to. Ironically, it’s something I wrote about in Majoring in Motherhood. I have a whole chapter on the issue of identity and the way we take things, sometimes good things, and try to find our identity and value in them.
“Author” has now become a part of my identity which still gives me a little thrill to say, but at the same time, comes with a certain weight. What kind of author will I be? Will I be a good author? A successful author? A well-known author? A forgotten author?
In my identity chapter of my book, I compare such things to the fig leaves Adam and Eve used to cover their shame. They’re never really adequate and they’re not lasting and good. And just as God gave them something better, He gives us something better: a secure identity in Christ.
As has happened so often in the last year, I need to be reminded of my own words. “Author” is part of who I am now, but it’s not all that I am.
Several years ago, I wrestled with similar feelings when I was deciding whether to continue on in graduate school. I ultimately realized I was doing it for all the wrong reasons, more because it was something I felt like I was expected to do, something I had to prove.
I could have continued graduate school. I got straight A’s my one and only semester. I managed to impress my smug classmates who seemed intimidatingly knowledgeable with my final paper. I could’ve done it.
But I realized I didn’t have to. So, I walked away.
Looking back, I see that as one of the harder decisions I’ve made in life…but also one of the most liberating. It felt a little like laying down a barrel of fig leaves.
Here’s a little snippet of something I wrote about it:
“Out of this muddled confusion, the question rises in my heart, ‘God who do you want me to be?” To which, he simply replies, ‘Be mine.’...Christ did not die to make me a writer; He died to make me his…What follows is that the way in which I can most glorify God, and so fulfill my purpose, is to belong wholly and completely to Him, irrevocably bound to him by the grace of his blood and boasting in none else. I will look to him to tell me who I am. I am his.
The truth that brings real peace, joy, and rest, is that if I was never anything else, it would be so much more than enough—just to be his.”
I could write another book. I’d like to write another book. I hope to write another book.
But I don’t have to.
It would be okay if I didn’t. It would be okay if I just continued pursuing daily faithfulness here in the walls of my home, teaching children to read, teaching them to tie their shoes, teaching them to see the wonder of God in it all. It would be more than okay just to belong to him, just to let that identity ring a little truer and leave me a little freer.
Fill in the blank for whatever thing it feels you “have” to do. Whatever the thing is, a gift or a calling or a role, that can sneakily become a little too ultimate, a little too much like fading fig leaves you’re trying to stitch into an identity.
Whatever it is, you don’t have to do anything. It’s been done for you. Whatever it is, it doesn’t have to be who you are. Christ died to make you his own.
It’s so much more than enough–just to be his.
Happy first birthday to my first book baby.
If you have read and enjoyed Majoring in Motherhood, please leave a review if you haven’t. If you enjoy Rooted, please share with a friend. If I ever do get around to writing that next book, support here goes a long way with publishers.
I’m really grateful to everyone for those who have encouraged me and followed my writing, some long before I was ever a published anything.