Timing and Waiting
Ironically the same weekend my first book came out, I was out of the country. As in the farthest trip I've ever taken in the few decades I've been alive. In a hotel room in Shanghai, I set up my Amazon author page. Then, the day the book officially released, I was on a high-speed train from Shanghai to Fuzhou. For any geo-challenged readers, that's China. Almost like a galaxy far, far away. Anything that takes 15 hours by plane to get to is like traveling to outer space.
Timing has been one of the biggest mysteries and curiosities in my life. Nine years to publish my first book and it released on another big milestone weekend. My family traveled to China, not because I thought it would add some Danielle Steel-like intrigue to say I was an internationally traveling author, but to adopt a little girl. That journey took three years.
A theme of my life: lots of waiting.
BUT, being faithful while waiting AND getting your heart's desire, YES. No nope's here.
While there's no way I could've pictured the way my publication journey would have ended up, I know it went the way it did for a reason. Y'all don't really think I researched Type A behavior to write Emily's character, do you? So, someone knew my Type A may have been too intense for that experience. Somebody (^) knows what they're doing up there, much better than I do.
Book coming out? All right. I also had a daughter to meet and learn and bring back to the USA. What an experience!
After China, I appreciated the English language, our alphabet, American food, American water systems, American toilets, American population size, and just being an American. While we did some sightseeing, that wasn't the purpose of our trip. We went solely with the mission to pick up our daughter, and it made me LOVE the USA so much more. It was incredibly interesting to see a completely different culture and civilization that has been around so much longer than ours, but there's nothing, absolutely nothing like home.
While our daughter will have her own story, I can't wait to tell her all that went on during our journey to her that weekend, and it's pretty awesome to have a book to show for it. I can only hope that with God's design of our journey to her and my journey to publish, I can show my kids they can truly be anything and do anything they want. Just ASK, SEEK, and KNOCKm and work hard til that door opens. It will open. Maybe not how you envisioned, but likely even better.
