Is It Quitting Time? by Lynn Dove

 I have never felt more like quitting than today!  

The weight of that thought droops my shoulders, and brings me close to tears.  I look at the blank screen on my computer and experience an overwhelming urge to delete every file, purge the hard drive of every piece of my writing, finished and unfinished, and declare my writing career done.  

For good.  

Forever.

I don't get paid enough for this!  The more I think about that fact, the angrier I become.  Is it worth it financially for me to continue?  

Seriously!  

My heart's just not in it anymore!  It isn't.  I haven't enjoyed the process in months.  It is tedium now, something I do out of obligation, a sense of duty.  I struggle whenever I try to put my thoughts onto paper.  I don't feel any sense of accomplishment after I've rattled off a somewhat mediocre article, just a sense of relief that I have completed yet another writing deadline on time.  I can now relax until another bout of nagging guilt forces me to tackle yet another last minute assignment.

I debate closing down every social media account I have.  I want anonymity, obscurity, to vanish like a wisp and face the consequences of what I am convinced is welcome oblivion.  

Will people even notice my absence?  Do I honestly think that my presence online is that important to anyone else?

So, I ask myself, "Why am I doing this?"

I pause.  The question begs an answer, but I have no ready answers.

Why am I doing this?

The question hangs in the air like a maleficent odour.  It reeks in its putridity.  I have to figure out an answer or I will eventually succumb to this impending stench of death.  I am hearing in my head the gonging chimes marking the death knell of my writing.

Why am I doing this?

Is it for the money?

No.  I almost laugh out loud.  I suppose there are authors who are making good money with their writing.  Not me.  

But, it's never been about the money for me...  Has it?

No.  There was a time I wrote for the sheer pleasure of it.  I wrote because I loved to write.  I was compelled to write.  The art, the act of writing beckoned to me from deep within.  When I was awake, I thought about writing, and when I drifted to sleep, I was still composing and editing the storylines in my head.  

When did it become about the money?  

I have to answer honestly with abject sadness, "When writing became more like a job, and less about the craft."

So if I'm not writing for the money, is it for fame?

I will admit that I enjoy the compliments, the comments, the writing accolades, the awards I have received because of my writing.  Prideful?  Definitely.  It does motivate me to keep writing to stroke my ego.  However, I have also faced criticism.

I don't like that.

I have faced critical evaluation of my writing, and even though it is hard to read and accept, I still continue to write despite it.  

I'm not stroking my ego then.  

It is persevering in the midst of struggle.  It is wanting to overcome, to grow, to improve.  I conclude that writing must be more than attaining money or garnering personal fame.  The revelation of that causes me to perk up a bit, but again I face that nagging question:

So, why am I doing this?

Philippians 1: 4-6 immediately comes to mind. "In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

The Apostle Paul is praising the Philippians for their work in spreading the gospel, and that work, with God's help, will not be completed until the second coming of Jesus.  For me, it is a rallying cry to persevere, to continue in the work God has called me to until such time He tells me to stop.

I am once again reminded that it's not about me, it's all about Him.

My writing is His.

It is not up to me to quit when I am frustrated, discouraged, overwhelmed or just plain tired of it all.  It is embracing my ongoing ministry, my partnership in the gospel, and I must continue it to completion.  I ask forgiveness for my self-centeredness, and ask God to renew my passion for writing once again.  

Thankfully, He always answers that prayer!

Lynn Dove is the award-winning author, of the YA “Wounded Trilogy”- a contemporary Christian fiction series with coming-of-age themes.  A wife, mom, grandmother, and free-lance writer with articles published in several magazines and anthologies including Chicken Soup for the Soul books, her blog, “Journey Thoughts” is a Canadian Christian Writing Award winner.  Readers may connect with her at lynndove.com 

I Want To Go Home by Bob Jones

No matter how successful you are success doesn’t grant you immunity from humanity. We all have days when we want to wave the white flag and call it quits.

 

There was a white-flag-day I’ll never get out of my head. And I wouldn't have it any other way. It happened in August 1979 in Attawapiskat, Ontario.

 

My new bride and I honeymooned as volunteer missionaries in Canada’s north. Any woman who endured what Jocelyn did is a good wife. Let me just state for the record that I found a gem. We lived for a couple weeks in Sachigo Lake, 643km north of Thunder Bay, Ontario.  Our second stop was Fort Severn on Hudson Bay. The third destination was Attawapiskat - an isolated First Nation located at the mouth of the Attawapiskat River on James Bay.

 

Everything about our experience felt foreign even though I never left the province of my birth. Each location was accessible solely by air. Jocelyn learned to use a washboard to clean our clothes. Our daily meals consisted of the bannock I learned to make using a Coleman stove. No TV, radio, Tim Horton's or movie theatres. We never settled into using outhouses, snaring rabbits or understanding Ojibwa or Cree.

 

By our third stop we were exhausted and sick. Hard work was familiar to us but we weren’t prepared for the strain of weeks of Day Camp meetings for children and church services for adults each night. And the evening services would sometimes last for three hours.

 

“I want to go home.” When your bride says that, you know the honeymoon is over. Our marriage was under the threat of never getting to our 3^rd month anniversary. Only a few children came to our Day Camp in Attawapiskat. Try as we might to encourage people to attend our evening services the only residents who came near the building were there to throw rocks. Literally. We felt soul weary.

 

The last straw was burning my hand on the potbellied stove trying to fry eggs. I walked to the Hudson Bay depot, called the missions director and told him we were done. Please, could we just go home. He graciously arranged for us to leave on the next flight out.

 

As we waited at the landing strip for our plane, one of the residents approached us and asked why we were leaving. “No one is interested in what we’re offering and so we’re going home.”

 

What he said next shocked us.

 

“You are exactly who we need here. You shouldn’t be leaving. We need you.”

 

My first thought was, “Where were you when we needed you?”

 

As we mulled over his comment, the plane landed, we boarded, buckled into our seats and were soon in the air looking down with regret on a failed assignment. 

 

It dawned on us that we quit too soon. We started with the intent of finishing. Quitting was a quick way out of being discouraged, sick and tired. By the time the plane landed we came to the conclusion that it's always too soon to quit. IATSTQ

 

We had no idea how the phrase “It’s always too soon to quit” would save us in many more discouraging seasons. Through forty years of pastoral work we kept going when everything inside of us was screaming “Quit!” There is a big difference between finishing and quitting and we determined that by God’s grace we would be finishers, not quitters. As a result leaders were formed, disciples were made, a congregation was relocated to a developing community and a come-as-you-are church is still reaching the skeptics, the used-to-believe and those who are far from God.

 

So much of what Jocelyn and I accomplished in pastoral ministry was because of that first failed assignment and learning that it’s always too soon to quit.