AFTER THE BOOK LAUNCH
Last Friday, my first novel launched off into the world, and I’m still kind of in shock. Over the past week, y’all bought books and cheered and shared and reviewed and have been so encouraging and incredibly supportive of me, and I’m grateful. I keep thinking about how grateful I am, actually, and I had planned to write about that this week. I was going to recap the event and the weekend and share how I’m feeling thankful for you and your kindness and your belief in me.
But tonight, sitting down in the early evening darkness to write, alone on my couch, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll come back to my gratitude, because that’s a big thing. But this week and next, because it’s a long topic that needed to be split up, I want to talk about unanswered prayers.
ESTIMATED DELIVERY
See, I’m really disappointed with God right now. And it’s for something ridiculous.
Let’s back up a little. After years of saying I wanted to write a book, I finally pushed myself to self-published my own novel. The process was painful and difficult and I had to make a thousand tiny little decisions, and I absolutely HATE making decisions. But I did the dang thing, and tried to plan a professional book launch. I set the launch date for the 25th, leaving myself plenty of time to prepare, but not so much time that I would procrastinate and ruin everything. I decided I would sell copies of my book at my launch party, making me an official author.
So I ordered the books as soon as I could, weeks in advance.
But then something got delayed. I originally thought the delay was due to the hurricanes, but honestly now I’m not even sure if that was true. I just know that at some point I checked on my order, and it said, “Estimated Delivery October 22-26.”
I did some serious breathing for a few minutes when I saw that. Surely the books would ship sooner. I couldn’t have screwed this up somehow, right? Surely. Once I had calmed myself down a little, I started to pray. I kept it simple, asking God to bring the books on time.
TIME TO PRAY
Over the next few days, I told a few people about the book situation. Some of my friends were hopeful, saying, “Oh, they’ll get here in time!” Others grimaced with me, going, “Oh, boy.” But several of them offered to pray with me for the books to arrive. My mother said she would pray, and she asked her friends to pray.
Whenever I thought about the books during the day, I would just say to God, “Please bring them on time!” And at night, exhausted from book launch preparation, I would say an absurdly quick prayer for the world, literally asking God aloud, “Please, God, peace in the Middle East and also my books on time? Great, thanks, goodnight.” For over a week, I kept checking my email, waiting for a shipping notification.
The days ticked by.
No email came.
UNANSWERED PRAYERS
I didn’t admit defeat until the morning of the book launch. I woke up at 8 am, made coffee, sat on the couch, and checked my email. The books still hadn’t shipped. It was time to face the facts: my very “professional” book launch would be completely bookless.
I was so mad. I sat on this couch, coffee in hand, staring out the window, and I felt so angry with God. Angry, disappointed, alone. While also somehow knowing that this wasn’t a big deal. So my books didn’t ship in time, big whoop. You know? Who cares, in the grand scheme of things, right? People are dying around me and I’m mad about books.
But I was still mad. I cared so much about this. And God didn’t give me this. And I was so angry and sad and mad. And I still am.
To Be Continued
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