I am not accustomed to being thanked.
As a writer, I typically sit on my lounge or in my writing ball chair, iPad perched on my knees, tapping madly away, happily oblivious to the outside world.
I can sit like that for hours. I might take a break at some point, eat some food, pat the cat, maybe get some air. And then I’m back to the writing.
Writing is not heaps interactive. My writing progress specifically and crucially depends on my capacity to get some alone time and disappear into my own head. It also depends rather heavily on my preference for said alone-time.
I love writing. I love being alone. We’re a perfect match. In some ways, I have become accustomed to my regular disappearing act.
So when I get a thank-you message from a perfect stranger, it sets my world a-spinning.
When I get a thank-you message from a perfect stranger, it sets my world a-spinning.
I have been utterly spoiled to receive not one but two such messages in the last couple of weeks.
Both messages told me they had read my book, Surviving Singledom. (I was astounded to learn that my book is, in actual fact, being bought and read by real people.)
Both messages thanked me for the book.
Both messages told me about how the book had shone a light into their troubled worlds, how it had come at the right time for them. Essentially, the messages told a tale of how the book had made a difference.
The messages told of how the book had made a difference.
The messages tugged at my heartstrings and tear ducts. And not just because they arrived at a time when I needed encouragement. (I have a feeling that sometimes God, being kind, deliberately aligns the delivery of some of these beautiful gifts to coincide with our times of need.)
These messages hit me where I live for another reason.
I always hope, as a writer who writes in a void and sends words out into another void, that those words land somewhere useful. I always hope that God will guide the trajectory of those words to the people who most need them.
I hope that God will guide the trajectory of those words to the people who most need them.
To learn this has actually happened, and not just for one but for two whole people, is incredible.
So thank you. Thanks to everyone who reads these blogs. Thank you to everyone who has read my book. Thanks to every supporter out there. Without you, there would be no purpose and no point to my writing.
You, the reader, make all the difference.
Do you have a story of being encouraged? Is there someone you have been thinking of thanking lately? Share your stories – let’s have a countercultural conversation.