Can I just say, the value of having people who know you, love you and push you is huge? I don’t mean just a nudge in the right direction. Or people who only know what you did last week for fun. People who know your soul, the strings that make you into an instrument for the Kingdom. Those people. They can create ripples that no one else can.
My dear friend said it best just last night: It’s time. When she said it, the fire in my bones burned a little fiercer, the passion that bubbles deep grew a little stronger. When someone else says it, it makes it more real. I know I’m a writer. I know that there is a God-written plan there, but hearing it from someone I love so dearly, someone who knows me better than most, cemented it within me.
It’s time.
The days ahead, I honestly don’t know what they hold. And that is okay! My only plan is to jump and let God teach me to fly. It’s different being on this side of dreaming; I have spent a year and a half cultivating my husband’s dream. Pushing him to believe in himself more than ever, calling out his passion and drive, reminding him of what God has instilled in him. But being pushed myself, putting my dreams out there and giving them wings…it’s scary. And I’m uncomfortable. And the judgement! What if everyone hates my writing? What if?
The Lord will make a way for His glory, you know what I mean? This isn’t about me or my words or my stories. I just want to be an instrument for the Kingdom, orchestrated by a God who loves me. He loves me. And I know that I am loved by my husband, my parents, my friends. But He loves me more.
I think of my boys and how I have watched them grow over the past few months and years. It’s amazing how my love for them grows and changes, multiplies and adapts.
I see God in that. How He has seen me, known me since before I existed here. And He knitted within me these passions, knew of His plan for me before I even took a breath. I think of the little girl that wrote stories in a spiral-bound notebook. The teenage girl who journaled about every detail of life every night for years. The seventeen year old who found the power and magnitude of words. The nineteen year old who spent nearly two years writing letters to the boyfriend she would marry. The twenty-one year old who began writing letters to her oldest son, and the other two to follow. I think of the woman I have become and the importance of being on this side of the dream: believing that God is able, not because I am able.
He loves me, and He is mighty in His words in me. That’s a dream that can fly.
JANELLE DELAGRANGE 