LIKE CINDERELLA

I’m counting the hours, polishing the zircon tiara, buffing up the glass high-heels, and pulling out my paste jewelry circa the 1940’s. Tomorrow morning I’m boarding the plane to fly to Dallas for the ACFW Conference. 

Okay, maybe I’m not really planning on wearing glass shoes or a tiara for the gala banquet, but I still feel like Cinderella preparing for the ball, and I do have paste jewelry that belonged to the mother of one of my mother's friends.

It’s so nice to be able to go to the conference this year—first time since 2008. But my what a difference in me from that year to now. I was a nervous wreck as I prepared to go then—worrying about my pitch . . . my one-sheet . . . my appointments with agents and editors. 

This year I’m not worrying about any of that. It’s not that I don’t need an agent. I’d give my eye-teeth to get literary representation. Okay, maybe a slight exaggeration there. I need to keep my teeth. And I really would love to sell a story to an editor and gain a nice big fat contract.

But the reason I have no stress in preparing for this conference is that I simply do not have anything ready to pitch.

Instead, I’m looking forward to meeting up with many of my writing peers and friends that I’ve made on-line since I attended my first Christian Writers’ Conference. I’m looking forward to squealing like a teenage girl when I see one of the many people I will recognize and who will recognize me. I’m looking forward to sitting up late in coffee shops or in another woman’s hotel room, crammed with a writing group from on-line, and yacking like a bunch of high-school girls. All we’ll need will be a place to sit on the floor, a crate of coke’s to drink, and gum to chew and blow bubbles with. We’re all a clean-living bunch.

I’m going to have fun, fun, fun, encouraging others in this journey to publication.

And it all feels so right. If there is one thing that I’m learning in my—ahem—mature years, it’s that relationships are everything.  

The Lord reminds me of that in His word. He wants the focus of my life to be that blissful one-ness that I experience in my relationship with Him through Christ Jesus. It’s not what can accomplish for Him, but what 

He does when I’m totally yielded to His plans, His timing. Somehow when I focus on that love-relationship with Him, He sees to all the engineering of my life and career.

So, I’m boarding the plane tomorrow. My hubby will kiss me goodbye for the 4 days I’ll be away. My husband knows I’ll be in good hands, and will safely return, because it’s as though I’m going away on an intimate holiday with my Heavenly Father. Together my Lord and I will have a time of bliss getting together with my fellow writers.

I know this because I can feel it when I pray—His smile over my enjoyment of getting together with others whom He has blessed with the great desire to write for Him.

Dallas, here I come!!!

Christine Lindsay is the author of Award-winning Shadowed in Silk. Book II of the Twilight of the British Raj Series, called Captured by Moonlight will be released by WhiteFire Publishing Feb. 2013.

Drop by Christine Lindsay's website and blog www.christinelindsay.com