Kismet

I have a confession to make. I’m a control freak. Not just the neat and tidy, either. More the type who gave my daughter a lecture when she rearranged some Christmas decorations and I told her she couldn’t because she wasn’t paying the mortgage.

Yes, that did happen. I could say that there were other things going on at the time stress-wise to cause such a reaction but . . . sigh.

So, now we’ve established I’m a bad mother and a control freak! And yes, I’m saving up for her future counseling sessions. As a person of faith, I do believe God has a plan for my life but my hands are clenched just as tightly as they can be around the steering wheel.

My nature lends itself to the job I do. Every day, I bring calm control to chaos as a pediatric ER nurse. It’s expected of me. However, as a Christian, I’m supposed to “Let go and let God.”

Easier said than done.

However, I have noticed that when I do surrender to His little nudges, things seem to work infinitely better. But I still have that cold-dead-hands grip on my life.

I’ve always loved to write. In high school, I wrote countless short stories, scenes, and even a couple of novellas. I didn’t always write things that were honoring to God. I did want to be published but my parents said I needed to go to college and get a real job.

So I went to nursing school. I really wanted to be a flight nurse and that became my sole drive for the next ten plus years. I stopped writing during pursuit of this one goal.

And that goal didn’t happen. Out of my frustration, I started putting pen to paper again. I sought input to see if anyone thought those words strung together were good or just the dismal musings of a person dissatisfied with her life.

I don’t believe God wastes anything. During pursuit of my unrealized dream, God used several interactions to speak to my heart about what I was writing. Now, I wasn’t a closet Fifty Shades of Grey writer, but by writing wouldn’t necessarily point people to God.

Maybe it would even pull them away.

I thought that if I put words out there, I’d be responsible for the effect they have on people. Did I want to explain to God why some people stopped believing because of something I wrote?

From then on I began to write with a Christian worldview in mind.

My stories partly reflect what I struggle with. Peril, my latest release, is about Morgan’s struggle with controlling her own life when everything is out of control. She’s suffered a horrible loss she feels she should have prevented, her health is in decline, and her marriage is breaking apart. This control freak is thrown into a hurricane. The novel is about her learning to relinquish the grip she has on the steering wheel.

My hope is if I write it enough, perhaps I can do the same.

What’s amazing is how God uses kismet or fate to weave these threads over the years, in order to reach one person at the right moment.

I got this note from a reader (the best thing as an author!) that Peril helped her realize she needed to “Let go and let God.” I shared my own struggle with her about being a control freak and this was her response:

“You see, before the foundations of the world began, God knew I’d be going through something on September 30, 2013 and He also knew He would give you the words to write and also give me the book and I would be reading just that passage at just this time. Wow. What an awesome God we serve.”

He truly is. Think about it. The years. The people. Those little moments that led up to that moment of inspiration for one person.

I think those moments are designed.

What about you? As we begin to turn our focus to the Christmas Season, consider the predictions made about Christ in the Bible. Were they designed, too?

This post first appeared at Everyone’s Story. Hope you’ll check out Elaine’s blog.