The Scream

Do you ever feel like there is something welling up and the only way to get any relief is to Scream?

Today... no, this week... has been like that for me. I bit off that huge bite called NaNoWriMo this month. Add to that, midterms, other tests, papers and not to mention Sunday School lessons, Studylight.org studies, The Partriarchs, Faith in Fiction comments, other people's blogs that are truly intriguing and I don't want to miss a single post and I feel like this person who cannot hold back a scream.

I spent the first part of this week getting all my work done so I could spend today and tomorrow writing. I got caught up on all the posts (I think) and found out some prayer needs which are very serious. My daughter just broke up with her boyfriend and she is very needy just now. Not to mention the emails (which I dearly love). Plus I'm just about caught up on studies but I haven't done two days of studies on The Patriarchs, and I only spent about three hours writing. NOT at all what I had planned.

However....

Now, this is the whole point of this, I came face to face with a calamity in my writing. My short story was based on a true story. My daughter asked about it so I told her the story. "Mom that is heart wrenching. There's a guy at Lifetime that loves doing true stories with heart wrenching twists. This is right up his alley. Write a treatment and I'll see if I can get it to him."

[shocked look]

So here I am writing furiously... doing some copy/paste and getting all the facts together for my NaNoWriMo book on Women in Leadership--A look at what the Bible has to say. (Those of you who followed my little mini-series on Women In Leadership got a little taste of it.) So, I'm fully concentrating on that project and here is this other project which I have had rolling around in the back of my mind for a couple of months and had originally planned to write for NaNo being tantalizingly waved under my nose like a carrot on a stick.

Quandary.

How do I know that my current work in progress (WIP) is actually what God is wanting me to do? Me neither. So I prayed. "God, I just need you to knock me on the head, point me in the direction You'd have me go and do not let me miss it. Please. I only want to please You, God."
This is serious because I've got just over 28,000 words on paper for a 50,000 word draft project. That is a long way down a wrong path which I was positive was the right one.

Then I get an email from a friend about the subject. I get another email from another friend about the same subject. I get another email from another friend. All this within the space of a few minutes of my prayer. I loved what Jules said, 'Dance with the one that brought cha.' How could I possibly ignore such profound wisdom? I agree, I could not. It is great to know that I have another project waiting for me to shape into a Tom-terrific story. It seems that God is lining them up for me.

The greatest thing is that He will keep me on the right path. His Word is a lamp unto my feet and light unto my path. Just as a deer pants for water, my soul pants for Him and the beautiful part is, He knows that I only want to please Him so it is much easier for me to hear that still small voice when it comes to direction finding decisions. Even if this did not make a lot of sense to you... I have a wonderful sense of peace now, and that makes a lot of sense to me.

P.S. (keening wail) Why didn't someone tell me that one of my all time favorite paintings was stolen in 2004 and has not been recovered yet. It was recovered on May 7th... just 3 months after being stolen in 1994 but this time, no Scream.