by James L. Rubart, @jameslrubart
When I was 14, the church I attended needed to find a new Youth Group leader. They asked me to be on the search committee and I readily agreed. They wanted the opinion of a punk kid? I’m in!
After six weeks we narrowed the candidates down to our three finalists. Each came in for a final get to know and to answer questions we’d all come up with.
The third guy was a superstar. Well spoken, funny, good looking, smart, extremely engaging. He’d been the president of Northwest Bible College, led several different Bible study groups, and could even sing.
After he left, the lead of the committee went around the room and asked each of us what we thought. As it worked out, I was the last to speak. When they got to me, I basically parroted what the rest of the searchers had said:
“He’d be great.”
“Can’t believe another church hasn’t snatched him up yet.”
“Winner, winner, I’d have him and his wife over for dinner.”
Like I said, I echoed the above sentiments. But I was lying. I didn’t feel that way. Something in my gut felt off. Something in my gut said to dig deeper. Something in my gut said he was a simmering dumpster fire about to get lit.
Turns out my gut knew what it was talking about.
It took three months before the truth came out. Among other things, the guy liked to treat his wife in a way that necessitated her applying liberal amounts of make up if she wanted to leave the house and not get stared at in a funny way.
I saw the guy a year and a half later at the Washington State Fair. He didn’t see me, and I didn’t approach him as he seemed quite busy crouched down behind a building, puffing on a funny looking cigarette that smelled like a skunk had just wandered by.
Here’s the point of my story: This coming year, just as with the ones before, you’ll have myriad choices to make with your writing career. Who to partner with for critiques and co-promotion. What publisher to go with. To indie publish or pursue trad. To sign with this agent or that agent. To take this course or that one, go to that conference or the other one.
So before you decide, take some time to listen intently to what your stomach is saying. Even if it goes against everyone else’s opinion. You can call it your gut, intuition, the Holy Spirit, that’s not the critical part. The critical part is to slow down, be still and find that peace that passes understanding about that choice you’re about to make.
It haunts me to this day that I didn’t say what I felt the Spirit was saying to be about that Youth Pastor. I was intimidated. Too insecure to go against what all the older, wiser heads were saying. Maybe you’re nodding your head right now because you have a similar story. In any event, this year, let us together decide to listen well and act boldly out of the truth our tummy has told us.
How Do You Stand Up for Yourself When It Means Losing Everything? Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy.
Then the bomb drops. Her dad was living a secret life and left her mom in massive debt.
As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop. The pressure to rescue her mom mounts, and Allison pours her fears and heartache into the journal.
But then the unexplainable happens. The words in the journal, her words, begin to disappear. And new ones fill the empty spaces—words that force her to look at everything she knows about herself in a new light.
Ignoring those words could cost her everything . . . but so could embracing them.
James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He thinks he’s still young enough to water ski like a madman and dirt bike with his two grown sons. He’s the best-selling, Christy BOOK of the YEAR, CAROL, INSPY, and RT Book Reviews award winning author of ten novels and loves to send readers on journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s also a branding expert, audiobook narrator, co-host of the Novel Marketing podcast, and co-founder with his son, Taylor, of the Rubart Writing Academy. He lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in Washington state.