We live in a broken world - and for the life of me I can't get it all right. But Jesus takes all our broken messes and He makes them, by His grace, into a mosaic of grace.
I started blogging in 2004, light years ago on the Web. And I began because I have this handicap - I can't figure out my life or see God clearly unless I untangle my life again with words.
I think it was simply word of mouth that made it a New York Times bestseller for more than 60 weeks, over a year. People being moved and changed and transformed by the book [ One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are] and wanting to share that with hurting people all around them.
The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging. And I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into it when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.
Unbeknownst to me, two readers of the posts, both published authors, contacted their agent, Bill Jensen, within 24 hours of each other, encouraging him to drop me a line. Which he did. He shared his extensive publishing background with me, and prayerfully offered to work out a proposal and to see if God opened any publishing doors? I never get over the unexpected ways of God.
I think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing. I was simply writing out our family stories in my online journal, scratching out what I want to remember, what I was wrestling out with God.
It's the greatest compliment when the writer becomes invisible in the whole process.
Really, the greatest compliments about a book [One Thousand Gifts] are never about the book, or the author of the book, but about the reader and God and how the pages helped them connect at a deeper level.
Maybe the man who said that his doctor had pulled him off Prozac because One Thousand Gifts and taking the dare to write 1,000 gifts was healing deep places in him and leading him to *experience* joy.
Maybe the woman who was handed the book [One Thousand Gifts] by a friend the morning before she had an abortion scheduled - and read the book and realized that this pregnancy that she didn't want - perhaps it too could be a gift from God? And then she said showed me the photo of this laughing 5 month old boy.
The greatest compliment of the book [One Thousand Gifts]? Maybe the Muslim man in Iraq who was given the book and came to a saving knowledge of Jesus, wanted to live his life in thanks to God?
That little burning bush that is the signature of the blog - it echoes Elizabeth Barrett Browning's words.
The blog is meant to be a bit of a side chapel - a place to slip into and still and encounter the glory of God - and come away again with a fresh sense that your life, right where you are, is a holy experience - that God dwells with you and in you, and where you are is holy ground, worthy of reverence and celebration and wonder.
Of asking nothing of the reader - but offering a still, quiet oasis in the cybersphere to go vertical with God. An island of stillness to know that He is God.
I didn't (and still don't) have comments [in my blog]. It's about simply writing for an audience of One.
So my blog wasn't about "platform" but really, it was everything you are not "supposed" to do in blogging.
I began [blogging] because I have this handicap - I can't figure out my life or see God clearly unless I untangle my life again with words.
I started blogging in 2004, light years ago on the Web.
Kathie Lee [Gifford] invited me to come to New York for lunch with her - and surprised with an unexpected shout out again for One Thousand Gifts on the show and graciously asked a few questions on camera. Indebted to her and the people who read and looked for Jesus in the pages and shared the hope and joy of Him - right where they are.
A year after One Thousand Gifts had released, Kathie Lee Gifford of the Today Show, named it one of her favorite things - the gift that will radically change your life. She shared the title with PEOPLE magazine as one of favorite books - quite astonishing for an evangelical Christian book.
I think it was simply word of mouth that made it a New York Timesbestseller for more than 60 weeks, over a year. People being moved and changed and transformed by the book [One Thousand Gifts] and wanting to share that with hurting people all around them.
Writing is this act of faith - a bit like driving in the fog: you can hardly see just in front of you. But you trust God's leading you and you just write into the space you can see ahead of you.
I wonder if the greatest challenges was to keep pressing into [writing] when I had never been here before. I felt like Abraham - being called to something that he didn't know how to get to.
The book [ One Thousand Gifts] took just over a year to write, on the fringe hours, early and late, around home educating 6 kids and farming and blogging.
[Bill Jensen] shared his extensive publishing background with me, and prayerfully offered to work out a proposal and to see if God opened any publishing doors? I never get over the unexpected ways of God.
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