It has now been a month since I returned from England, and God has been busy.

For all intents and purposes, I had finished the first draft of the book.  But I wasn’t feeling very exuberant about it.  In fact, I was feeling pretty discouraged.  It felt like it lacked something to hang it on.  The concepts were all well and good and a reader could certainly walk away with some tools they didn’t have before.  But it lacked a backbone.  Not a good place for a book to be.  Limp and flimsy is not quite what I had envisioned.

Three weekends ago, I was grinding away on the manuscript, trying to make some headway, when I got a bad case of the fidgets.  I needed some big Post-its Notes, and pronto.  Thankfully, I keep a stash on hand and was able to get some on the wall in fairly short order.  It seems that it was a Holy Spirit moment, because I can’t recreate how the thoughts came together, I can only say that they did.  God took some concepts from a book I had read and showed me how the fractal approach they used would give me the framework I needed for mine.  It was brilliant and it had nothing to do with me!  It was one of those moments when you realize that the answer was sitting right next to you all along and you just didn’t see it.

This brought a new infusion of life and I was excited again.

What’s more, I also wondered what it would be like to build every book on a fractal.  It wouldn’t have to be the same number that I chose for this book, but what if all of my creative efforts were somehow connected to this universal set of patterns?  They are clearly present in music.  I suspect they are also in architecture and other forms of art.  I wonder what would happen if I looked at my other favorite pattern, the Golden Ratio, through the grid of fractals?  This idea of using the existing structure and its properties has some very interesting possibilities.  I am excited to see where that goes, and how to find the practical application in other contexts.

Meanwhile, the wonderful world of theories and abstractions wasn’t the only place where God was working.  He was sticking His fingers into all kinds of places.  Really earthy places.  Pretty plain and simply painful, some of them.  It seems that every week for the last month and a half (including the one in England when I was supposed to be writing!) has unearthed some huge area of personal growth and healing.  I have been spending more time putting myself back together than I have doing much of anything constructive.

And that has been tough.  On the one hand, I know that what has been happening is hugely important.  One of the events was so close to the core that it left me feeling quite “at sea” for several days.  This is really big stuff for my life.  But I have a book to write, God.  Can you stop messing with my life for at least five minutes and let me write it?

This weekend was a real struggle.  I wanted to work on the new idea, but it just wouldn’t.  Finally, I talked to God about it, which I should have done about three hours earlier than I did.  The sense I got was that I can’t go there yet.  I need to let the idea soak some more.  That wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear.  So, we had a longer chat.  You know how that goes.

At the end of the day, I had to come to grips with a timeline that is different from the one I envisioned.  I set about writing a book.  God has set about transforming lives, including mine.  He cares about this story even more than I do.  He cares that people find Him, by some means or method, when they read it.  He knows what that takes, far better than I do.  He also knows that my temperament pushes me to produce, and not let it drag on for ten years.  Now I need to embrace a new dance, a new rhythm, a cadence that is heavenly orchestrated.

So, I will. (Though it might take a couple of tries with my pesky soul before I reach sheer perfection on this one!)