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I’ve recently watched my friend come over land attempt various home repairs for me. He is usually surprised by the odd way something was built or wired here. Often, he will give a short grunt and utter, “The tool I need is at home.” Apparently my cute little lavender-colored tools are for show and not for real work. I’d say that carries over to this writing project. Yes, I’m armed with a wonderful Mac laptop that can attach to old monitor to yield two screens, but I knew I needed something to help organize and catapult this project toward reality. Then I remembered a webinar that I had “stumbled onto” several months ago given by Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Christian book publisher, Thomas Nelson. I gleaned from his knowledge about writing a book, but most importantly, he explained the numerous writing programs he had tried and ultimately found a very reasonably priced efficient tool called Scrivener.

As I enter into the new realm of Scrivener, I searched for information about this new tool. And where does one go today to learn anything? YouTube. After watching a few brief videos I was convinced this tool would be a great asset. The first hurdle was being brave enough to purchase and install the program. This might sound like I’m a total technology newbie, but during the 80s I owned a Texas Instruments computer that I would take and set up in my second grade classroom and later actually taught my Kindergarten students to use a Commodore 64. Lately, I’ve relied on my adult kids to take care of my technology needs. Well the process went surprisingly quick and easy until I hit a snag in finding where to register my license number. I sat discouraged thinking to myself that I was just not able to do this and I’d made a big mistake. When I realized that those thoughts weren’t true, I embraced the overcomer in me and like had fog lifted, I immediately clicked on the correct heading and easily registered for use.

I admit that I’m a bit overwhelmed with the online manual that has page numbers into the 800s. As I realize that this tool is exactly what I need to accomplish what God has placed in my heart, I’m ready to sit down and take the time necessary to learn to use this tool. I was intrigued that the online tutorials and manual give encouragement to try the functions and use them to get familiar with the capabilities. I think about how often people have a garage full of tools that can do amazing things, but remain untouched because of not knowing how to use them or how to capitalize on the many features each provides. My cell phone remains one of those tools that I only use a small portion of what it could do. In this phase of life, I’m ready to use all my tools and not let anything sit unused that gives me power and ability to accomplish what I’m called to do!

So, as I sit here ready to open the program and press the button to start a new project, I excitedly remember that yesterday at church a new friend prayed for me “as God was launching me into a new things.” She had no way to know what I was facing or ready to do, it was a lovely Holy Spirit-led prayer responding to the encouragement I had been to her during our conversation. Hebrews 10:24 rings true that we should spur each other on toward love and good deeds—and using our tools to accomplish what God has for us to do!

How often do we have ideas and dreams that we know are needing to be birthed through us, but yet we allow other things and other people to distract and pull us away from taking time and effort to bring the idea into being? I’ve had so many creative ideas that I’ve known are directly from God, yet I’ve chosen to not press forward with them. Well, I feel like I’m jumping  into something that I’ve been created to do, and this first step will open doors or at least accelerate me towards the other plans that have laid dormant for months.

On Thursday, I was discouraged thinking about this year is the year for me to choose to bring life to my dreams. I asked God to send encouragement for me to proceed with what I’d allowed myself to put on hold because of other life experiences pulling at my time and attention. When I woke up at 5:30am on Friday, I was surprised to see two texts from China. One of the texts showed only a Chinese name and the words, “Do you remember me?” Hmmm, that could be one of hundreds of Chinese kids that I have worked with over the past 9 years during the summer exchange programs. Then a text came through identifying it as the boy I had hosted in 2016 and not heard from since that time. I shared info about the family and pets, and he shared photos of his family. Then I ran my idea about online English tutoring past him. I was surprised that he was very enthusiastic and thought it was a great idea. Then he texted, “You can do it.” I had to laugh. Here was the boy who had lived in my home and not really shown enthusiasm for anything. Now he was the vessel that God resurrected to speak encouragement to me. Wow, what a great reminder that we never know the impact we have on someone and how the Holy Spirit can use the experiences to speak to someone.

Later, I was listening to teaching tapes about being bold and asking God for our desires. Well, I thought I had been doing that, but I realized the newest desire was to get a car and get going on the business and book dreams. Interestingly, I stopped the tape and started writing down ideas. The thoughts and plans spilled over onto page after page, until my pen literally ran out of ink. I went had caught a few words of Facebook video of Lance Wallnau theorizing that contentment is a learned skill that American’s have lost. Immediately I thought about how this idea of teaching contentment to kids was needed not only in America, but in China. Wham, I remembered the text from Vivan in China. Although it was almost midnight in China, I texted her. She texted back and told me she had opened an early learning center in Hong Kong. I told her I had an idea and curriculum that I think would work in China, and she was very enthusiastic. I know that she previously wanted me to come over and do teachings, but now I felt like this was an idea that the time was ripe for it. This project can not only provide extra funding, but open doors to writing again is an important step toward writing the Turkey stories. Although I woke up Saturday morning with thoughts of fear and how I had really gotten too excited over something that would fizzle and I should probably not waste my time—nope, not listening to those thoughts! I am made for this and God has been waiting for me to give Him something to bless because He is good and desires me to prosper so I can bring the Kingdom of heaven into places and to touch people who have yet to embrace God’s love.