Good News, Bad News, Chubby Donkeys: Memos on Waiting

That day, in the whirlwind of working with kids at home, I received the kind of email I felt in my chest. Bad news.

I heard my respiration accelerate as my fingers curled the counter’s edge. My daughter watched my face, then looked at the screen.

My literary agent: So that book you’ve written, the one on pre-order on Amazon. The one with over one hundred footnotes. Got this letter from your publisher. Because…COVID. You get to keep the advance, but they’re pulling the plug. Yours isn’t the only one.

I phoned my agent with bravado, calmness, perhaps an ill-concealed grasping. We gathered facts and plans.

I was suddenly, mortifyingly back to what I’ve mentally labeled the Rejection Phase.

For non-writers: This is when, like a boxing ring, a wannabe author’s proposal is submitted to publishers. The goal is to remain standing through a hook to the jaw (“Not a good fit for us at this time”), a jab to the kidneys (“Not a big enough platform”), enduring for the hope of a prize (“We’d like to set up a video call to talk about your book!”).

It is, I will admit, a privilege to make it to the ring. Previous rejection phases take the form of rejected article ideas, blog posts with paltry traffic—and then, for survivors, the next round of scrabbling for an agent.

I slipped into our bedroom, curtains drawn. Cried into my husband’s chest.

The Back Story

I’m guessing you have some conversation that’s been repeated throughout your marriage. A year ago, our kids riveted to a DVD in the back of the car, my husband endured the 477^th iteration of a conversation.

“Should I even be doing this?”

“How much longer do I hang in there?”

And some version of George McFly: “I just don’t think I can take that kind of rejection!”

This season represented a white-knuckled attempt to regather myself following our family’s return from Africa (less “relocation”, more amputation). I stanched emotional and spiritual hemorrhaging, then vivid phantom pains.

The blender of my identity had run with the lid off, I told a friend later. I kept attempting to scrape it up with the blade of my hand, portions dripping uselessly to the floor.

Good News: The First Round

This was why, a year ago, a large Christian publishers’ interest in my work felt like obscene wonder, sheer miracle.

I texted friends like a modern version of the woman who recovered her lost coin. I found it, or at least a big part of it.

The subtext, to myself: He has not forgotten me.

“Do not lie to me.”

So as I reached for sleep a few weeks ago, eyelids tear-swollen, one of my favorite biblical stories materialized there in the dark.

In the narrative, she is nameless, save “the Shunammite woman”. She’s wealthy, builds the first missionary housing–an extra room for Elisha.

Elisha wants to do something in gratitude; prophesies a child for her. She’s barren, a spout of shame.

And she said, “No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant.”

But the woman conceived, and she bore a son about that time the following spring, as Elisha had said to her.

Perhaps with me, you feel her self-protection against false hope. Too many hurts, too much disappointment, too much blood already shed.

I feel her startled joy, too. I know the blossoming of what should not, could not, have happened. Of life rustling in the belly.

The Bad News

When the woman’s son is grown, however, he’s working with his father in the field..and dies.

She lays him on Elisha’s bed, hops on a donkey. To her servant: Urge the animal on; do not slacken the pace for me unless I tell you.

These days, I told my husband, are donkey-riding days. Sometimes I visualize my donkey as a bit chubby, with a tottering gait. I’m bouncing.

At that point, she does not know Elisha will return with her, spreading himself on the body of the boy. That her son will live again.

Her tenacity resonates in me. And yet part of me, too–through rounds of loss–has become more open-handed. More trusting that even God’s “no” is from love.

God loves us too much to answer our prayers in any other way than the right way. And he loves us too much to answer our prayers at any other time than the right time.

Lysa Terkeurst, It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way

My Chubby Donkey

The day I heard my book died, I lost a few pounds in saltwater.

Then, I revised the old, formerly-approved proposal for the book I have already written. I sent it to my agent. Close friends and family began praying.

I knew well the truth: Economic recession. Small-ish platform (mine). Other unpleasant realities of the Rejection Phase.

Previous waiting reminded me my identity cannot hinge on a book, or any idol.

Waiting. Again

I waited, but not only physically. I was slamming the windows of my mind against a storm.

Lies lashed like hail: God does not care about your dreams or your work for him. He just doesn’t care about success. Who are you if you are not successful? What will everyone think of you when this book and all its expected ministry turns out to be a big joke?

Waiting has developed different protection in me than I had a year ago. For the most part, lies bounced harmlessly outside the house of my head. He owed me no miracle to prove his goodness, his care. My love for him is not to get.

He replaced them with warm fires kindled in me, blown hotter by my own mouth:

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame… Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame.

 … Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

It’s this reality that finally helped this round to be embraced with peace: His love–not unlike my kids–is not attached to giving me what I want.

He doesn’t need to prove his math. Somewhere, here or in eternity (so often, the latter), he always gives more than he takes.

But those weeks, those shamelessly sunny days in Colorado, were chubby-donkey-riding days.

The Good News, Part II

It’s only with me telling you this story that you can appreciate a resurrection with me. (It took me awhile to figure out how to write about what felt like my failure.)

Sharing and understanding the scope of bad news, shame, grief–helps us all celebrate just how good news is.

Two weeks ago, I signed a new contract…for the same book…with Harvest House. Lord willing, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills for Messy Families (or a retitled, re-covered version) will release October of 2021.

My new editor is enthusiastic, gracious, personable. And who knows? Maybe the new release date will allow me some distance from abysmal COVID sales numbers.

…And the Epilogue

Most of me is simply over the moon with this news.

There is a small, befuddled part still rubbing its fingers over the last month and a half, trying to make sense of it all in a year where so little makes sense. Where so many suffer so much worse, eternity promising the only conclusion to waiting and why‘s.  We see through a glass darkly, friends.

(Someone might say, Well, isn’t that just how God does things! I’m sure this will be better!

I find that tough to say to my friend who lost her husband, or her kids who lost their dad. I would have found it hard to say to my refugee students after violence and rape, their villages burning. Yes, God promises long-term resurrection.

But short-term “better”? Never a promise. In this world you will have trouble.)

I don’t know what you’re waiting for. Trusting God with. Or perhaps struggling to trust at all. I don’t know how long you’ve been riding your donkey, what lies in the field behind you, or what will happen in the end.

I simply know deep in my gut that he is perfect in all of his ways. As you prod your donkey?

May you know you don’t ride alone.

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