These 8 Little Words are Pushing Me Persevere

The flowers are gone, but I’m keeping the card forever.

The writing part of my life was challenging this fall. I diligently researched and interviewed and wrote and worked on a lot of things that have yet to come to fruition. So many hours of brain-power with so little to show for it.

Between September and December, I submitted a lot of work (devotions, articles, queries) to various places.

From those submissions I’ve received:

• 9 rejections (3 came in one day)
• 6 pieces still under consideration
• 2 “resend this to us in a few months” emails
• 3 Acceptance emails (3 of 20 sure things, Ugh) (not counting newspaper articles)

I was also contacted by Woman’s Day Magazine for an article they were doing on forgiveness and spent several hours answering a list of questions. I  meticulously reread and edited it to make sure my thoughts were clear and accurate. They later decided not to use my input.

In addition to actually writing, I’ve put hours and hours and hours into the technical side of this website knowing that my time put in would not have a monetary value. And I still get super frustrated with it because it just doesn’t like to cooperate with me.

On top of all those things,  I’m working on a big project. A book. My first. I have a completed proposal, three chapters and lots of research done, but felt God leading me to wait during the fall months. Every time I wanted to push ahead on it, He pulled me back. “Wait, Kimberly. Wait.”

Oh my goodness, waiting is so hard. And writing so much and getting paid so little is so frustrating. Sometimes I just want to go be a greeter at Walmart because I think I could handle saying hello and putting stickers on people’s return items, and I think they’d probably pay me for it.

One day in December, when I was feeling particularly disheartened about my career choice, I kind of fell apart on Corey. He thought we were gonna have a relaxing little sit in our hot tub, and was met with my emotional chaos instead. (Sorry Honey.)

The next day I received a big beautiful bouquet of flowers and the card pictured above.

To Kimberly, A woman of strength, courage, capability and worth. Love, Corey

My hubby is a man of few verbal words and even fewer written words, so the value of each drop of black ink on that tiny little card is immense. If he can watch me work my butt off for pennies and still believe in what I’m doing, then I need to shift my perspective, stop focusing on the world’s version of success and trust the path where God is leading.

Though, if at the end of that path I found a bigger paycheck, I wouldn’t complain. 🙂