The morning after

4:30 p.m. Today's project was to get some rest from the very long, highly successful boutique I had participated in yesterday. After devotions and breakfast, I needed to reorganize inventory and follow up with customers. My Sales Director Laurie would help me purchase some needed products--seemed there was a "run" on black Ultimate Mascara and Firming eye Creme!

I was also expecting a call at 9:30 a.m. from Lauran, the cover design editor from Tate Publishing, so she could get to know me, my vision for the front cover, and what I really wanted it to convey to potential readers of Walk Through the Word: Galatians.

Suddenly, I was hit with the most tearful, depressed feeling I'd had in quite a while! Melancholy is not generally in my range of emotions, and if it does come upon me, it's fleeting, usually related to Steve's Alzheimer's and the devastating effect it's had on our daily lives.

But the source of this sorrow was relatively trivial. In an email earlier this week, Lauran had talked about the cover design process, urged me to get a professional photo done for the back cover (scheduled for Saturday the 6th with my professional photographer daughter Heather) and requesting that all final decisions on my part be completed by November 30. All of her deadlines were more than reasonable, because my "thing" up to this point was the content--faithfully teaching God's Word to a much wider audience than the two groups of women who had completed the study with me in 1987 and again in 2009. My daughter Heidi had asked me a couple of weeks ago what my book would look like, and I replied, "Honestly, I don't really care. I just want people to do the study and learn what the Bible has to say!" Little did I know that the appearance mattered more to me than I thought until my flesh got into the act!

Somehow one aspect of the book proposal in Lauran's email jumped out at me: it was to be 5 x 7, soft cover. I reacted, "5 by 7! That's the size of a medium sized picture! How tiny will the font have to be and how many lines of space would be provided to write in their answers?" I knew it didn't contain enough verbiage to make an 8 1/2 x 11, but wasn't there something in between? Trying to get some perspective, I went to our bookcase and measured a Warren Wiersbe book, On Earth as it is in Heaven, which was about 6 x 9, and thought, "it's bigger, and that's not even a workbook!" I kept thinking, sinfully, of all the years, really, and months of work, as well as time and financial investment that has already taken place. Quite a sacrifice on Steve's and my part in these difficult times. On top of it all, I tearfully thought, "what will the enemy have any naysayers express at seeing such a tiny book?" The book just suddenly welled up as a debacle, just utterly out of all proportion!

Seems I forgot Whose idea the Bible study was in the first place, Whose Holy Spirit had guided every step and every stroke of the pen and typewriter that brought the original A Woman's Walk through the Word to life, led women to participate in the lessons, and used it in many lives. Paul writes in Romans 7:18-25 about the flesh warring against the Spirit, which certainly happened to me this morning. But in verse 25, Paul presents the rescue and the Rescuer, the Lord Jesus Christ!!

As I sat down with my dreary self to journal my thoughts, Psalm 42:5 (KJV) popped into my head:

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? And why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance.

From pouting to praise, from flesh to faith, through being honest with the Lord, though I was very disappointed in myself. Yet God did not condemn me, He just loved and encouraged me with the need to be at peace, and to let Him take charge of my life, in all aspects, not just the appearance of a book!

Later, when Lauran called, she and I went over many ideas, and when it came to the size of the book, she felt that 7 x 9 would be large enough for writing in, but still of a size to carry in a bag or purse. Her expertise, and knowing I am working with a Christian publishing house combined to give me the confidence to know that "God's got it!"

How often we go from a victorious and wonderful event to dropping down into the doldrums overnight! I pray our "nights before" and our "mornings after" will have a calm consistency, as Philipians 4:7 says, so that "the peace of God which passes all understanding will keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus."