fOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS

​About seven years ago, I began to hear a quiet whisper calling me into a world I knew little about.  The girl I was at that point in my life, a girl who hadn't known a lot of brokenness, said yes to that quiet whisper, signed up for a writing training program, and started a blog.  Over the next couple of years, I would sporadically add to my blog, especially as I encountered the most violent storms I had ever seen.  Slowly I began to find my own voice and friends started coming to me asking how could I have known to write the very words that their heart needed to hear.   
A couple years into the blog, a phone call would start to change everything.  A girl who once had confidence in her calling and in the Voice that called her, began to listen to the voices of others.  I remember driving around by myself that night after my husband had spoken to me about what had been said.  I remember taking roads that I didn't really know and the truth was that I didn't really care where I wound up at.  I remember lots of crying and lots of yelling at God that I didn't understand.   

And then came the second in a consecutive pattern of tsunamis, and honestly I basically quit.  Not only was I hurt, angry, and disappointed, but I was overwhelmed with the barrage of storms that were hitting me from all sides.  Somewhere in the hidden places of my mind, I decided if God wanted words in a blog, then He could let one of His ordained men write it and I would be quiet and behave myself and stick to baking casseroles and teaching VBS.   
In the meantime, my heart has ached to write. The words have spilled over onto the pages of Facebook and Instagram.  The words have bounced off the concrete and metal of a maximum security jail pod and into the hearts of hundreds of women.  The words have ran through my brain in the wee hours of the morning, but my hand refused to let them land on a piece of paper or on a computer screen.   

There are hours of training inside this brain and hundreds of pages of notes on how to do all the things I'm supposed to do upstairs in my sitting room.  There's a book on this laptop that is waiting to be finished.  The first version isn't in my voice, but I went back to change that and never finished. I've received tips and suggestions on how to finish it from acquisition editors from some of the most known Christian publishers, and yet I haven't done the things that need to be done.   
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When I was a little girl, I wanted to be an Esther.  I wanted to make a difference.  I wanted to save my people. And here I am in the year 2021, when freedom of speech is quickly becoming a thing of the past., and I am allowing my voice to be silenced, not by censorship and the enemy, but by my own fear and choosing.  Oh God, please awaken that little girl inside me who wasn't afraid to be an Esther.  Please awaken that girl who boldly stepped out in the fall of 2013 with a blog.  Please remind me that the only things that matter in this life are the eternal.  Remind me that my time is running out.  God, please stir the embers and bring back the flame.   
Mordecai spoke the words to Esther in Esther 4:14, "For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"  God, please help me to no longer remain silent. Please help to push me to accept whatever my role is in providing relief and deliverance to my generation.  Help me to find why You chose me for Your kingdom at such a time as this.  Please do not allow me to miss this. Don't let me be overwhelmed by the darkness, but remind me that this little light of mine is like a star against the blackness of a vast sky or a tiny candle in a dark room. God, please bring the words back.  I'm so sorry for listening to the wrong voices. Remind me that I am accountable only to an audience of One.