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“The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.” ~ Psalm 37:23
In preparing for the pitch I gave to the agent this morning at my writer’s conference, I had several things to iron out about my writing. I needed to go in with a concrete idea of what made it unique, who my target audience is, and…word count. Since I was pitching a completed piece of non-fiction, that last one was important.
And yet somehow, in all my preparation and practice for the pitch, I missed that until an agent pointed it out in a workshop yesterday.
So last night I found myself, bleary-eyed in front of my computer, totaling up the word count of my entire first year of blogging. (Yes, that was just as much fun as it sounds.)
And it turns out, I wrote a LOT last year. In fact, I wrote so much that I will have to make some pretty significant cuts. Basically, I learned at the conference that a great target number for a first-time author is 85,000 words.
In 2011, I wrote ten words shy of 135,000 words.
To me, this was like God holding up a giant sign, saying, “LOOK AT EVERYTHING I DID IN YOUR LIFE LAST YEAR!” All of a sudden, having this record of the everyday, sometimes mundane things He was doing every step of the way went from a bunch of small, individual pieces, to a truly amazing picture of an entire year of God’s incredible work.
And if God did nearly four hundred pages of work in my life last year, I think it’s pretty safe to assume He’s been doing at least that much in my life ever other year. Which, continuing down this path of thought, means that the combined works of God in my life would produce a book longer than the Bible.
And for someone that feels pretty average most of the time, I am humbled by how much time that means God spends on me.
To tally it up in such a way shows how much attention He lavishes on each and every one of us, we just never stop and think of it in such a way. But the Creator of the universe has a life story for each one of us that is a richly detailed tapestry, we just rarely get the chance to see all of the pieces come together to form the finished work.
One of the most powerful ways God shows us His love for us is simply this: He delights in every aspect of our lives. Never forget what a powerful testament that is to how deeply He cares for you.