Serendipity and Unanswered Prayers

Serendipity: a happy accident or pleasant surprise.

More than a decade ago, after filling away yet another rejection letter, I squared my shoulders and took another path.

I spent the next several years working feverishly to build a platform for my writing. Progress was painfully slow. Little by little I obligated myself here and committed myself there until one day I found myself back into the proverbial corner. I’d worked myself into a position where I had to create content week in and week out for my website and radio affiliates. All Things Southern became a burden. I began chaffing at the demands of my own creation. She was requiring too much effort, too many words. I felt sure I was spinning my wheels. I longed to lay it down and write the books I felt sure she was preventing me from writing. Despite having felt that ATS was my mission field from the onset, that I was meant to lighten loads and ease burdens with weekly stories and chuckles wrapped around little nuggets of devotional thoughts, I began negotiatingwith God. I’ll lay this all down, I told Him repeatedly, if He would just give me the okay. He wouldn’t. I’m sorry. I don’t know how else to say that. But I’ll do ladies’ seminars and concentrate on teaching the Word, I told Him. You know how I love that! All I got from heaven was a big fat no.

In the middle of that season IT finally happened. I became a published author. After having self-published my first three books, I now found myself with a for real agent and a contract with a for real publishing house. Booksellers and readers embraced Suck Your Stomach In and Put Some Color On, (and I’m eternally grateful), allowing me the privilege of working on a follow-up, Sue Ellen’s Girl Ain’t Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy. Still, I persisted in kicking against the weekly deadlines. I continued dreaming of the “other things” I wanted to write that All Things Southern was keeping me from writing.

One day I’ll tell you the story of how I came to lay my want-to down. God and I didn’t “strike a deal.” I yielded. I decided to want what He wanted before I wanted it. And then I asked Him to make it so, to move my heart by what moved His. Ever so slowly I began to value the weight of All Things Southern that was always forcing me to cry out to Him. And strangely, that led me to gratitude for the very demands I’d been resenting. Talk about your pleasant surprises!

Oh, and those words I had been hammering out week after week? With my new perspective I began to see how they had become the bones of those first two Penguin releases. That whole time in the trenches– I’d actually been working on the elusive books I dreamed of writing! Talk about your happy “accidents”…

While I’m now working on a proposal for the next book in the southern non-fiction humor line, I’ve just gotten first edits back to my editor on an entirely different type of manuscript and from where I sit today I can clearly see how the years I spent churning out five articles a week were simultaneously teaching me invaluable writing lessons. Right now, my thankful heart wants to share one recurring thought. She’s not heavy. She’s All Things Southern.

Okay, switching gears a moment.

Rather than a separate post, let me use this space to encourage you to join me for tomorrow’s radio show, ATS LIVE!

My special guest will be best-selling author Erin Healy, in to talk about her new release Afloat. It’s a supernatural thriller that kept me turning pages and I want to share it with you!

Showtime is 5:00 – 6:00 PM Central, airing on KMLB Talk540. That streaming link and can always be found at the website, but here’s a direct link to make it easy for you! Live show chat will be held as usual on the ATS Facebook wall. See you on the air!

Hugs, Shellie

Shellie Rushing Tomlinson is an author, radio host, and speaker from Louisiana who loves to follow God but can be incredibly slow catching on to His ways.