Before and After with Guest Cynthia Ruchti

I’m addicted to Before-and-After pictures. Hair makeover. Home makeover. Make up makeover. Yard makeover. I love to say “Wow,” to compare the “needs work” version of something to the “Isn’t that amazing?” version, to watch the transformation from dull and lifeless or outdated and awkward to stunning.

That may be part of the reason why serving ACFW as president and hosting the annual conference moves me so deeply. The conference itself is an album of Before-and-After pictures.
A favorite worship song contains this bridge (in two meanings of that word):

I come in empty; I leave filled.

Bring my sickness; I leave healed.

Brokenhearted; You mend every piece.

I come in captive; I leave free.

Many ACFW conference attendees arrive empty, exhausted from a year’s worth of striving, of staring at computer screens and draining their energies to balance life and writing, dreams and reality, passion and possibilities. The After picture shows conferees leaving filled to overflowing with ideas, hope, enough instruction to have earned them a degree, and enough new friendships to max out their Facebook limits.

Some, though thrumming with anticipation, arrive feverish, overdosed on unmet expectations and works-in-progress in desperate need of suturing. In the After picture, they have a better understanding of what to expect in the publishing world, and their projects have gained a healthy glow rather than the febrile flush.

Brokenhearted? Yes. Some arrive brokenhearted. Their Before pictures reveal bloated rejection folders and disappointment scars that show no matter how much concealer they use. And although the ACFW conference cannot remove the rejections and may in fact add more, the After picture shows evidence of mending because the attendee let the Lord at the scarring.
Captive to any number of false hopes and misguided dreams, conferees come to the conference and experience a retooling of their thought process and the birth of new dreams guided by the Holy Spirit’s work on their hearts and through their instructors and fellow writers. They leave free—bound only to God’s will for their writing, not the expectations of others.
Are these Before-and-After images true for every person who attends an ACFW conference? No. Some come in captive and leave captive. Some were gloriously free when they walked through the doors on Day One.

But every post-conference picture shows change. A broader smile. A deeper look of determination. Greater confidence. Clearer direction.

Sure, on closer inspection, each image shows evidence of exhaustion, too. The intensity of conference is both exhilarating and exhausting…and all the more so for the conference team, board members, and volunteers who pour themselves into the needs of the attendees.
But one look at the Before-and-After pictures reminds us it’s worth every ounce of energy expended.

In early September of 2008, I wondered if I might be heading for my last ACFW conference. Was the pursuit of a fiction contract my idea after all? I thought it was God’s. But I’d worked a long time and written a lot of words that remained unpublished. I arrived at the conference empty, willing to lay down my desire to write fiction if the Lord had something different in mind for me.

I left filled.

Within two weeks, I had an agent and a contract (for They Almost Always Come Home, Abingdon Press) and within two months, I’d been elected president of ACFW.
At the following conference in 2009 I was blessed with another contract (for the newly released A Door County Christmas, Barbour Publishing). Other projects now wait on editors’ desks.
Willing to lay it all down, I came to conference brokenhearted and found the Lord truly does “mend every piece.” Another transformation from Before to After…with no doubt more work to be done on me every day of this writing makeover.






Today Cynthia is giving away one copy of each of her releases to two Seekerville posters. Winners announced in the Weekend Edition.

They Almost Always Come Home (Abingdon Press)
The Heart's Harbor in A Door County Christmas (Barbour Publishing)


Bio

In addition to her role as ACFW president, Cynthia Ruchti writes and produces the radio broadcast, The Heartbeat of the Home, and serves as the editor of the ministry’s magazine, Backyard Friends. Her women’s fiction debut novel—They Almost Always Come Home—received 4.5 stars from Romantic Times. Her September release—The Heart’s Harbor in A Door County Christmas novella collection—is a romantic comedy. She and her plot-tweaking husband live in the heart of Wisconsin. Visit Cynthia at : www.cynthiaruchti.com