I watched the Tony Awards this past June with my eldest child, a Broadway nerd in the best sense of the phrase. It’s my fault she is this way. I started taking her to the theatre at the age of six and made annual mother-daughter pilgrimages back to the Holy Grail of theatre – the City. We’ve watched the Tony awards together for 12 years and probably will watch it for more than twice as many more. One of the things I love about Broadway is that many of the actors, writers, and members of the theatre community are unabashedly followers of Christ. They thank their family and God when they win and genuinely seem happy for those who beat them.

What does this have to do with the day job, you ask.

One of the winners, one we were rooting for and who has done some amazing work, mentioned the day job in his speech. While he didn’t thank God, he did say something that has sat with me ever since. After thanking his family and theatre companies supporting his work, which he also referred to as family, he said:

“And to anyone struggling with day jobs out there in order to make work that comes from your heart and your gut, keep the faith. Thank you.”

Those were his last words. They were the ones that stuck with me. Only they stuck in a way that felt… well, startling. Maybe it was an afterthought. I think it was meant to be encouraging. Though they weren’t to me. In fact, they kind of stopped me in my tracks. And they took away from the excitement I had for his achievement.

Fast forward two months and I am thinking about what I would write just before taking my daughter to college where she will major in dramatic writing. This speech settled somewhere in my head comes to mind. Maybe it is because my daughter will likely have a day job as she pursues the dream of seeing her work performed on the stage and small screen. She may be an assistant in the writer’s room or a PA (Production Assistant) who does a lot of running around filling whatever need on 13 to 14 hour days with very little pay for a graduate-school educated person. Am I worried about her? No. I trust the gift God gave her. He showed me her talent as He enabled her to win national contests and have her work professionally produced not once, but twice while she was still in high school.

Then maybe it is because I’m looking for a day job myself. Maybe my own situation made it sad for me. Sure, it would be amazing to have a big contract and be sitting behind my computer with the next two or three books just waiting to flow onto the page. That’s the dream, right?

And if your day job is more of a nightmare, then keeping the faith is encouragement – hope even. But I don’t look at the day job as a struggle. I look at it as part of the journey. Whether your day job is mom and wife, journalist, photographer, professor, waitress, salesman or clerk, it went through God’s hands. I know that sounds like the Christian thing to say, but probably not heartfelt. Only it is.

We write from what we’ve experienced and what we wish would be. We write what we see and feel. For me, at least, these things come from my day job. For the last several years, the bulk of that day job has been as a full-time mom and part-time ghostwriter. And while I don’t write stories about moms or even their children, my experiences as a mom and ghostwriter, as well as from my past jobs, are a part of my writing, my perspective and my response to the struggles of the human heart, as well as Jesus’s redemption of our heartaches, which is what I write about.

So, thank you for the day job. For the time I don’t feel guilty for not writing. For the experiences, people and thoughts the day job gives me that sitting behind my computer cannot. For the income (when paid) that allows me to go to writing conferences. Thank you for the day job for the person it has made me… and, for how He will use it to change me and my writing.

One day, writing fiction may be my day job. Until then, I’m thankful for the ones I’ve had and the ones to come.

~*~

Nick Kording writes contemporary and Biblical fiction with a touch of romance, as well as Christian living, Bible studies and devotionals. She writes for His glory.