February 14, 2014
I thought I knew what I wanted.
I really did.
I was in my mid-thirties, had a
terrific husband (of eight years), a cute house in a town not far from my
hometown and family, the ability to write from home, a respected literary agent
and a three book historical romantic suspense series making the rounds with the
top Christian publishers in the industry. I was set. And completely convinced
that I had everything I could ask for. Well, everything but the finalized book
contract with a publisher, that is.
And then I went on vacation last
summer. It was a good vacation. Planned at the last moment—like usual—but to
generally the same location my husband and I visit every summer: a rustic cabin
built by my husband’s grand-father and great-grandfather in 1948. This pine
tree-surrounded cabin sits on a lake in Northern (as in WAY north) Maine. We drive
up simply because my husband has the vacation time to spare, and we like to
stop along the way and visit places like Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts
and Moosehead Lake in Central Maine (where my third book is set).
But for some strange reason,
this vacation felt different. It was our eighth summer staying there and
visiting extended family who are closer to me than my own cousins, aunts and
uncles... but I was getting restless. I’d heard snippets of interest from a
publisher earlier that summer, and my third manuscript was a finalist in a very
prestigious writing contest. I was becoming a little obsessive in my thoughts
about what was EVER going to happen with these books I’d poured the last four
years of my life into.
One night while staying at the
cabin, my husband (being the Mainer that he is) asked to take me out for a
moonlit canoe ride. We didn’t have to go far to be surrounded by the moon and a
multitude of brightly shining stars. Usually, when I get to such a place all I
can think about are my stories and how to make them real for readers... but
this time, as we sat there silently staring at the sky I felt a question
resound through me, to my heart.
What do you want more than
anything, Dawn?
My quick answer:
I want my books to be
published.
Does that seem like a silly
answer to you? It didn’t to me. When I’d begun my first book (the one the
publishers had in their hands), I’d written it for myself. Not to be published,
but for something to do... because I wasn’t having babies. I’d always wanted to
write a book. I just thought I’d do it after I got married (right out of
college, of course—haha!), had my children, and they went off to school… much
like the time-line of many of my writer-friends who are also my age.
But that night, as I sat there
in that canoe, I realized I’d given up on all that. Nothing was happening. Not
that I was jumping through hoops, popping pills, or getting fertility shots.
I’d simply been told that there was NOTHING wrong with me. I’d spent too many
years thinking, “Where are my babies?” that I just needed to stop. So I
did. I pretended not to care. I forced myself into a submissive attitude,
telling myself that it didn’t matter. If God wanted me to have babies, then I
would have babies. If He didn’t, I wouldn’t. It was that simple.
However, my books… now there was
something happening. They were SO CLOSE to publication and had gotten there
relatively easily. I figured that was what I was meant to do. WRITE. And why
not? There’s nothing I’ve enjoyed more than creating and writing an intensely
complex love story to thrill my friends with. So yes, my answer made complete
sense to me. It was what I’d come to want more than anything else.
Until I got home from
vacation
and couldn’t write. I had my rough draft of the third manuscript
finished, but
there were so many things I needed to polish and add to the end of the
story. There I sat with the desire to write, yet I
was suddenly too exhausted to think! I thought it was the fact that
we’d been gone
for over two weeks, which was longer than usual... but a few weeks later
I had
another, very odd suspicion that it was something more than that.
My brain was in a constant fog,
and I was too tired to really do anything—more tired than I’d EVER been in my
entire life. And suddenly the idea of eating anything sounded disgusting?
I couldn’t fathom the truth. How
could it be? It was a fact I knew all too well: Dawn couldn’t get pregnant. But
slowly, cautiously, I began to really believe it. My husband took me to the
grocery store that week (because I couldn’t make it on my own!) and at the end
of the bread aisle I told him, “I think we need to buy a pregnancy test.”
The remembrance of the huge
smile on his face when he held those two pink lines up for me to see later that
evening still breaks my heart. He’d been praying and praying all those years,
even after I’d given up. And suddenly, with the answer of his faithful prayers,
it didn’t matter so much if my books ever got published.
And yeah, I’d thought I knew
what I wanted a month before... that week when I'd been asked, and God went
into action to immediately prove me wrong.
I was wrong. So
wrong.
I’m now six and a half weeks
from my baby’s due date... AND I was finally blessed with a three-book contract
with Whitaker House Books earlier this winter. I still want both—don’t get me
wrong—but nothing compares to feeling the surprising, crazy, fierce love I have
for this baby wiggling inside as it grows bigger and stronger.... Not even the
joy of completing a 90K manuscript that a publisher actually finds worthy of
publishing under their name.
Throughout this pregnancy,
although I am quite nervous about the strange mixture of having a newborn baby
and a three book contract to deal with at the same time, I can’t help but constantly
think back to the two verses that I long ago picked out as the themes for my first
book and how they ended up being not just for my heroine, Amaryllis Brigham, but
for me too.
Ephesians 3:20 ~ “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us...”
[photos added April 2014]
James 1:17 ~ “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change...”
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