Feeling Stuck? Read on... Devotion by Dianne J. Wilson

I watched a bee try to get out of my house yesterday. He buzzed up a storm up and down the glass. He was trying to find a hole, I guess? Up and down, left, right. He pushed hard to get through every millimeter of that glass pane. He was dedicated. Committed. Probably a bit desperate. At the end of the day? Still stuck.

Before you think I’m heartless for watching the poor thing struggle without helping it, hear me out.

The window was open.

At any moment, he could have flown free.  I did eventually help the little guy, but it got me thinking about how we live sometimes.

We can see the vision, the goal, the dream. We push towards it with every scrap of our energy. We keep pushing and trying, we change tactics and try again – because surely a God-given dream should work, right? And yet sometimes, there is simply no breakthrough. We try until our all our energy and passion is depleted and then a small sliver of disappointment lodges deep inside. If nothing changes, this sliver grows to a wedge that can drive us away from trusting God and what He’s called us to do.

Friends, if God has placed a dream in your heart – the window is open.

If I spoke bee, I would have said to that little chap buzzing in my window, “Hey, take a step back. Stop the frantic buzzing and breathe a little. Find the scent of fresh air and follow it.”

God is saying the same to us. “Step back. Stop the frantic buzzing and breathe. Find the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit and follow it.”

‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.’ Zechariah 4:6

‘I know that everything God does will endure forever; 

nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it.’ Ecclesiastes 3:14

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She is writing the third book in YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed. Book 1, Affinity is releasing on the 8th of June 2018.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon & Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.

FRUSTRATED? WHY? It's all so easy.

Yes, occasionally / mostly / often, we writers possess this attitude, sometimes with a vengeance!

Literary agent Rachelle Gardiner received some interesting comments from readers of her blog. They follow:

1. Frustrated at finding the right audience.
2. Frustrated with the marketing side of it. To her it feels so much like a waste of time when she'd rather be writing.
3. One had two agents answering her query saying it was great, but they'd pass.
4.One multi-published author had six different manuscripts out to publishers who asked to see them......several months ago! And still no word.
5. One very frustrated fellow said genres have become restrictive requiring square peg stories to be hammered into round genre holes! He wanted to be able to read a story that sweeps across the literary landscape going wherever the story takes it. Umm, a little like the frustrated author in the cartoon?

What frustrates you most about the whole rigmarole of writing the book, finding an agent, sending in the proposal, then having to market the book you know the whole world wants to read? Aargh!!!
But we are writing faith-based fiction aren't we? 
The following encouragement is from Karen Ball of the Steve Laube Agency:

A woman went to visit her mother, telling her how discouraged she was, how weary of all the struggles in life. The mother took her into the kitchen, set three pots of water on the stove, turned the heat on high. In one pot she put carrots; in the second, she put an egg, in the last, coffee grounds. After about 20 minutes, she turned off the heat, fished out the carrot and the egg, and asked her daughter to what changes had taken place.
“The carrot’s all soft and squishy,” the daughter said, “and the egg is hard boiled.”
The mother then poured the water from the coffee grounds into a mug, and had her daughter sip it.
“What change has taken place?”
The daughter smiled. “The water’s been changed into a delicious coffee.”
The mother put her arm around her daughter. “So then, we have a choice when the heat is on in life. We can grow soft and squishy, like the carrot, or hard inside like the egg. Or we can be like the coffee grounds, and change the water around us into something rich and refreshing.”
Let’s give that a try, friends. Let’s let God use the hard times, the discouragements and frustrations, to refine and perfect us. 

* Rita Stella Galieh, author of two published full length novels, is learning to overcome frustration in her attempts at finding comparable books in a requested proposal. Does anyone else find that an easy task? Apart from ACFW's Fiction Finder and AMAZON, where else can you find such things?