Small Beginnings & New Habits

In this small, obscure book tucked neatly at the end of the Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah has been sent an angel from God to help him understand the visions he’s been having. Zerubbabel is the governor of Judah and in charge of the daunting task of rebuilding the temple. The vision given to Zechariah was a message to Zerubbabel to encourage him. Through Zechariah’s vision, God is telling Zerubbabel the task will seem huge, and he may think the task is too big for him, but not to doubt. Even though the beginning is small, God rejoices in his effort to begin this good work, and wants him to keep his vision on the grandeur of the end result.


We live in a society of immediate gratification. We want it and we want it now.

We exercise and diet for a week and wonder why we still can’t fit into that cute bathing suit we
bought as a motivation to lose weight.

We want to build our dream house and don’t know why we have to actually have the money first.

We have started a business and don’t know why we haven’t made our first million in the first year.

We start writing a book and don’t know why publishers aren’t knocking down our doors to publish it.

Anything worth accomplishing requires a little due diligence. We must begin creating new habits. Boy have I had to realize that one lately! During the seven years I was dealing with depression, seizures, and too many medications, my body and my brain were on lock down. I did not have the desire to do anything that required energy, whether it was physical or mental exercise. I was “mush” for 7 years.

Once God healed me (physically and mentally) and I was free of all medication, I expected to just jump back into life full force. Joy was once again my friend and I was ready to enjoy all pre-seizure and pre-depression activities.

God was not finished with his lessons yet!

I began writing (which was a new hobby for me), photography, exercising, driving the kids all over the place, cooking, cleaning, etc…and I would get so frustrated because I couldn’t keep up with it all. When I was trying to lose weight after pregnancies, my husband would always tell me it took 9 months to gain it, give myself at least that long to lose it. So now I have been “mush” for seven years. Does that mean it will take seven years to get back up to speed? Not if I can help it! But I do need to work diligently to accomplish my goals.

When I decided to write a book, I called an old friend who was now a writer to ask her advice. She immediately got me plugged in to a local christian writer’s group. I went in to the first meeting all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, only to walk away with the old deer-in-the-headlights look. I was overwhelmed. They were using terms like pitch, one sheet, tag lines, deep POV, query letter, blogging…I had no earthly idea what they were talking about!

My instinct was to forget the writing group and just go home and write, write, write. If God was calling me to do this, then he would make it successful, right? Well, obviously he can perform miracles, he’d already shown me that. But thankfully, my reclaimed friend and now mentor, Vonda, gave me some very good advice. She gave me a few writing blogs to follow, and she told me to just attend the first few meetings as an observer (not bringing anything in to be critiqued just yet).

Fighting my know-it-all instinct, I followed her advice. After a few meetings and some reading at home, I began to understand this foreign language I’d been hearing. I became even more inspired to write, and to give God glory by learning to do write effectively so I can do the best job possible to further his kingdom.

I still have much to learn, and this will be an education to last a lifetime. But when I went to a writer’s conference in May, I received confirmation over and over again that I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing. Two publishers took my work with them, and two agents requested book proposals.

As a pharmacist, writing is a whole new world for me, and is not one I would ever have considered on my own. God definitely led me there. I am sure Zerubbabel was intimidated by the task of building the temple, just as I am intimidated by the task of writing a book. But because I am being obedient to God in this task, I know that he is rejoicing and blessing my writing every small step of the way. I’m incorporating new habits  am looking forward to the grandeur of the end result, whatever and whenever that may be.