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!