Me? A Calling?

     As we drove down the highway through the Rocky Mountains, I prayed.  Lord, are you calling me to write? I admit when I asked this question, I was equally scared of the yes, as I was a no.  I had invested time, energy, and resources for the past two years in a writing career, but sadly I had never asked this question until now. 

     

     The dictionary defines a calling as a summons or a strong impulse. As a Christian writer, a summons from God defines you and your future.  Just ask some people from scriptures that were summoned by God, for example, Moses and Paul.  The summons requires time, sacrifice, and suffering as we lead our readers into a closer relationship with God or a journey towards a changed life.

    

     I knew if God answered yes, it would change me.  Fiction writers can tell you the world of fiction can be very personal.  Our characters face problems we have dealt with too.  They have character flaws that resemble ours or someone we know. Our characters struggle in their relationship with God as they face infertility, loss, or betrayal, just like we do.  Our readers watch God carry our character through crisis after crisis to victory in three hundred pages or less.

     

    God’s yes can help me grow.  As I sat at my favorite writing place, God gave me a different perspective. As I wrote, I saw this verse in a fresh way. What I understood about this scripture was broadened. 

 Proverbs 3:5:

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
    he’s the one who will keep you on track.

     

     I have always looked at this verse from my life.  If I didn’t get the job I wanted maybe there was a reason, so trust God.  If the test results didn’t come back the way I wanted them, God has a plan.  So as not to give my story plot away, I will use a recent true example I heard to illustrate my changed perspective. 

     A young girl in high school was killed twenty years ago.  Since her death, her parents visit the killer in jail and attend his parole hearings asking for his release.  I am struck by the way parents who are grieving a loss of a daughter can trust God.  The emotions they must have felt during prison visiting hours when they sat across from him trusting God as they forgave him.  They were unaware of the impact they would have on the young man or on a stranger (me).  They trusted God with what they didn’t know. They listened to God’s prompting to go against their own feelings and follow God’s command to forgive.  The parents put aside their own grief to change a life.  It wasn’t about their future, but someone else’s.

     

     A synonym for calling is mission.  As Christian writers we have an awesome responsibility given by God to play a part in his plan.  He has gifted us with the creativity to write an interesting story.  God has given each of us a writing style and a voice to reach readers who have different learning styles, life experiences, and love languages.  It is our mission to help our readers understand the workings of God through our characters and their struggles.

     In the Rocky Mountains, God said Yes. Whether it’s a book or a blog, only God knows.  But knowing I am called helps me when life gets hard.   When I am writing late at night or early in the morning, sacrificing time with family to meet a deadline, or working extra hours to pay for membership dues or writing conferences.  All of these sacrifices are worth it, because I am called. I must keep my mind on the bigger picture, my end game, the unique vision of my calling.

Jennifer Filka, an Indiana native, graduated from Indiana University with a degree in Elementary Education.  Her dream to become a writer started in fifth grade when she entered her first writing contest.  Jennifer writes women's fiction with the hopes that her stories will draw her readers into a more intimate relationship with God.  Jennifer resides in Carmel with her husband, Jon.

These Are the Rays of Our Lives

Several months ago, I wrote a philosophical metaphor on my website entitled, The Geometry of Life. Here on Hoosier Ink, I’ve considered how our lives as writers affect eternity within this theme of geometry. It’s deep but simple. I promise I won’t strain brains that are not math-oriented!

Let me start with lines. Lines give me a stomach ache, and my fifth grade classes often experienced the same reaction. I told them to think about forever and drew a line on the chalkboard for the entire length of the board, an arrow pointing away on both ends:

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I started my speech. “To my left, this line continues off the board, through the window, across the parking lot, goes all the way through Indiana, then to outer space until it’s beyond our solar system, our galaxy, and beyond the farthest galaxy that we know about. It never stops.” I moved to the right and repeated another set of distance markers. Long before I finished, the class was moaning as the idea of forever began to sink in.

God’s existence has no beginning and no end. Excruciating to our finite minds. As a child, I tried to picture forever. My mind traveled as far as the stars beyond my vision, and then, and then… and then…….. I pictured a kite sailing in a blue sky. Imagination had to return to earth. I couldn’t see forever. I couldn’t handle the concept.

Moving on to rays. I marked a dot on the board, then drew a line in one direction to the end of the board. I told my students: “Every person can be compared to a ray. Each of us has a starting point. Starting points we understand. We were born, we live a given number of years, we pass from this life, and we spend forever in heaven or in hell.”  

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The students’ groaning started anew. People have a beginning, but they have no end. While my limited mind can’t wrap itself around the glories of heaven forever, I’m smart enough to know that I don’t want to exist in the agonies of hell for any amount of time, much less forever. My students agreed.

Line segments are easy. We’re comfortable. Time on earth is a line segment. You’re born, you live your life, you die. Life on earth has a beginning and an end.

._______________.

Points became another challenge for my classes. A line, which goes on forever, is made up of points. One… after the other… You can’t count them. They are of infinite number. (Another chorus of groans.) But each point is significant. I completed the analogy by demonstrating how each point is a single human life on earth making up the line of eternity.

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What I do with my little dot on eternity has a bearing on which direction I eventually continue, an eternal ray.

As writers, our words will most likely outlive us. Anything we publish will affect our readers—positively or negatively—for Christ. Even our personal letters can inspire or devastate readers for the rest of their lives.

Love God, help your neighbor, work hard to produce something good in God’s eyes. This is every writer’s mission. God gives us guidance in an infinite number of ways to accomplish our tasks.

 At this point in my life (pun intended), I want, more than anything else, for my stories, my novels, my blog posts, or my articles to point to Jesus, a ray pointed toward heaven.

Linda Sammaritan writes realistic fiction, mostly for kids ages ten to fourteen. She is currently working on a middle grade trilogy, World Without Sound, based on her own experiences growing up with a deaf sister.

Linda had always figured she’d teach middle-graders until school authorities presented her with a retirement wheelchair at the overripe age of eighty-five. However, God changed those plans when He gave her a growing passion for writing fiction. In May of 2016, she blew goodbye kisses to her students and dedicated her work hours to learning the craft. She still visits the school and teaches creative writing workshops.

Where Linda can be found on the web: 

www.lindasammaritan.com

 www.scriblerians.com

 www.thescriblerians.wordpress.com

 www.puttingonthenew.

 www.facebook.com/lindasammaritan 

 www.twitter.com/LindaSammaritan