Sometimes the things we most desperately want to figure out are the things that need to percolate slow. There is no hurrying a crock-pot meal. There is no rushing a sunset. Coming up with a title for the book I finished this summer has been like that for me. You would think it would come in an outline, matter-of-fact way. In a way that is logical and sensical and clear. If you count the book proposal, I’ve been working on this book for the past two years. And in all that time, I could never find the one phrase that said the thing it took me 60,000 words to say. It kept me up at night. It made me crabby. It also brought out my perfectionist issues because, you know, it has to be the perfect title. Which is kind of exactly one of the problems with my good girl life; the obsession with exactly right, the desire for just-so, the need for you to like me and everything I do.
And so I need grace, heaven-helpings of it. Grace to release myself from the invisible standard, grace to trust that even if there is no perfect title, it doesn’t mean the book will fail. And I need grace to trust as we come to a final decision, because a decision means this thing is really happening, women really will read my book, and failure is a sure possibility. I so need grace.
Did you hear it? Is it as painfully obvious to you as it now is to me? It didn’t come quick and it didn’t come easy, almost like I had to live it out and then name the living. And so we did. I hope it will mean something to you as it has meant to me.
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