The Art of NOT Scratching . . .

I lay still, ignoring the itch on my foot. A clump of cloth in my shirt pressed into my back. A hair near my face drifted lazily in the breeze from the air conditioner, grazing my cheek. Still I refused to move. No scratching, no brushing away the irritating tickle, no straightening my shirt. Then a bug landed near my eye. I tried to blink it away, but it crawled toward my mouth. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I flicked it away, furiously scratching and wiggling away my discomforts.

I had failed.

My intent had been to step into my daughter’s shoes. Rachel couldn’t control most of her movements, so the simple act of brushing a bug off her face was beyond her. She couldn’t form words, so even telling, much less showing, us what itched, tickled, or ached didn’t happen. So if a hair drifted to lightly brush her skin, she simply had to tolerate it.

It wasn’t the first time I tried to feel what she felt. When she was sick, we often had to deep suction her, so I did the same thing to myself, running that tube through one nostril down toward my lung. Yeah, it hurt. We still had to do it to keep her healthy, but we worked hard to sooth her afterward.

And my little experiment in stillness made me pay more attention to her environment. None of us could watch over her 24/7, but we tried hard to watch out for pressure points, insuring that she wore soft clothes, and that her skin stayed clear.

Why? Because we loved her. We knew that she’d have to hurt sometimes, but we wanted to ease that in any way we could.

Compassion. It grows out of an awareness of the suffering of others and the sometimes overwhelming desire to alleviate it. It’s not a special gift, but a deep, ingrained part of simply being human. And as believers, we are called to it, to reflect outward the same compassion God has for us. Passages that detail His compassion for us abound throughout Scripture, and Paul reminds us that what He has done for us, we should do for others. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12 NIV).

Paul knew compassion can change lives. And with enough of it . . . the world.

The Journey to Rejection (aka A Writer's Journey)

I’ve seen a lot of posts lately about rejection, and the struggles writers have had to be published. In an era when self-publishing seems to be all the rage, and a dozen new technologies are changing the writing world on a daily basis, traditional publishing seems to remain the ultimate goal for many authors.

Yeah, me too.

Once upon a time, no other choice existed. I am just old enough to be part of that reality. Oh, I started out with a bang. My first biographical essay—a look at my great-great-great-grandfather’s Civil War experience—hit the presses when I was all of eighteen. The author photo the paper used was my junior school picture. I celebrated. I was on my way!

Then . . . nothing. For NINE years . . . nothing. Oh, I wrote. Daily. I submitted frequently. I have more than 300 unsold short stories, all written during that time, and multiple rejections on each one. But when I finally sold one of those stories—ah, sky rockets! That 84-dollar check meant I was the next big thing!

Well . . . maybe not. The second sale was still two years away. I had a day job. Then a child. I wrote . . . some. I tried my hand at screenwriting and even won an award and got my first agent. I had dreams of breaking into the film industry.

Then came the divorce. And I wrote not a word for five years. Nada. I finally reconnected with a friend in publishing and pitched a devotional to her. She didn’t want the one I had, but hired me to write a different one.

Once again . . . silence followed.

Then came a movie that lit a fire under my rear. The Matrix. Groundbreaking in a lot of ways, what it did for me was to remind me of all the things I loved that I’d let slip away. I dove back into them. And the combination broke a block that I didn’t even realize I had. I finished a science fiction novella, which got some editorial attention but never sold. I branched out and finished a historical romance novella, which sold to a digital publisher who was way ahead of her time—it sold no copies to consumers.

More rejections. LOTS of rejections. I turned to magazines and sold a few feature articles. But I received even more rejections. At that point, my rejection count was up over 500 of those silly form letters.

So WHY did I keep trying? Because I’m a writer. It’s my mindset. It’s my calling. It’s in my blood. If I don’t write, I go nuts.

In 2005, finally, things began to turn around. I sold two novels. Then a third. But I struggled to sell the next ones. Rejections abounded. I signed with my second agent, so she got to handle the rejections—and I still get them.

For me, thirty years passed between my first sale and the time my writing career did more than stall. But I now have written and sold more than ten books, and I’m working with my third agent.

I still get rejected.

Do NOT let rejections discourage you. The more you write, the more you’ll receive. It’s part of the business.

But the business is NOT about the rejections. It’s about the message, the stories God has placed on your heart. It’s about honoring His gift to you. It’s about giving all of that—the gift, the stories—a voice, and letting them be heard. 

It's about the writing. Always.