Into the Fire

How many times have you been instructed or thought on your own you needed a backup plan. Who wants a backup plan? Most of the time it means your preferred plan failed to materialize and you're relying on a less than favored substitute. Although it could mean, Plan A wasn't all that hot either and leaned heavily toward not succeeding, so Plan B will provide adequate backup.

Writers need backup. They need their computer files backed up. They need backup plans for agents and publishing choices if their first effort(s) are unsuccessful. They need backup readers/endorsers if their chosen ones can't manage the task of reading their novel and providing a favorable blurb. They need to manufacture a backup for any part of the story an editor wants to change, erase, or enhance.

It doesn't hurt to have an emotional backup plan in place if it seems as though every door is closed after submitting your work to many professionals only to experience being outrightly ignored, getting the form letter rejections, seeing the "not right for us", and being told too many times to count: "Don't take it personally. It's just business." Really? "Personally" is what's it's all about. It wasn't your dog who spent two years constructing this novel, editing and re-editing, even paying for a professional edit which proved a dismal failure at a hefty cost. It was you. So if anybody failed here, it's you. Or them. Which is always a possibility. However, no way to prove it at that moment.

So what's the backup plan? You can ask that question to a multitude of authors who will answer with the following variety of responses: lots of chocolate, weeping incessantly, a few (or more) stiff drinks, the repeated urge to cuss someone out, throw a stack of stuff against the wall, composing nasty retaliatory notes and then burning them in effigy, and so on. Most of these writers will return to their craft after their alloted time for mourning, sulking, raging, or dissing every known publisher on earth.

The real backup? For Christians it's always the same: prayer, reflection, obedience, and action. It's a total package that gets broken up into compartmental reactions, but for believers, it's what is done. We do what we're ultimately supposed to do if pleasing the Lord is our first priority. Sometimes we confuse the priorities, replacing God's plan with our own. At least until it doesn't work, or it doesn't achieve what we thought it would or should. The solace arrives with the realization – or sometimes revelation – that there is a plan designed just for us by a dynamic and fascinating Creator who always has our best interests in mind. Hard to understand how our "best" sometimes involves suffering (and I'm not talking about publishing rejections here), but in the grand scheme, it all works together for good. Somehow. The Plan A belongs to God. His plans don't fail. We do, sometimes, in the process of life. That's why we need His backup. Whatever it is.

Father, thank you for watching over us, for directing our steps, illuminating our paths, always always being there for us. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.