My Biggest Challenge? Me

I'm a chicken. There, I said it. That's the biggest challenge I'm facing in chasing my God-sized dream of writing. I'm going into this dream scared absolutely out of my mind and doubting myself a lot. I am my own biggest obstacle in this thing.

A few months ago, when all this crazy dreaming started, I looked up a link-up that I remembered from a few years ago - The Red Dress Club. (Now its called Write On Edge.) Each week, they post a prompt, and you have a maximum of 500 words to tell a story based on that prompt. That very first week, the prompt reached out and grabbed me. It was perfect for the ideas I'd been toying with for so long. I spent two days working on my piece, agonizing over every word. Then, finally, I posted it to my blog, using a pen name because I was so afraid it would be bad, I didn't want my real name on it.

When my phone dinged with the first comment, I seriously thought I might throw up. I stood in the middle of Walmart, gripping my phone and shaking. Turns out, the first comment was good. So was the second. So were the others. There were also suggestions for things I could do better, but overall the feedback I got was very encouraging. (You can read that very first post here: Bought.   Just so you know, there's not much on this blog because I moved to Wordpress shortly after starting it.)

That was several months ago, and not much has changed. This huge dream still terrifies me. I still doubt myself every single day. I'm still terrified every time I finish a post and hit "publish." I'm still afraid of what people will think when they read it - I mean, let's face it, there's a pretty big dichotomy between writing a faith-based, working mom blog and writing about fictional detectives and serial killers.

I still wonder if this dream can become a reality. I still wonder if I can really see my books in print one day. I think of all the fantastic authors out there, all the great books I've read, and I wonder, "What am I thinking? There's no way I can write like that."

Then I remember the truth: this isn't my dream - it's His. It's a God-sized dream. It's something a whole lot bigger than me, from Someone a whole lot bigger than me. It's a dream that's been whispered to my heart for a very long time. I spent years thinking, "I wish I could do this," until God told me "It's time." He spoke to me, clear and strong, and confirmed it through more than one person. So I'm going to keep dreaming. Is it crazy? Yes. It's the craziest thing I've ever done. But I believe, deep down in my heart, that if God called me to this crazy dream, He's going to do things I could never do on my own.