Fairy Tales Do Come True~They Can Happen To You

By

Melanie Dickerson

Mary asked me if I’d like to come to guest post in Seekerville, as my book was just coming out. I jumped at the chance, of course. But I wasn’t sure what to write. This is how I started out:

The middle ages is such a romantic time. I don’t know when I got that notion, but I suspect it was when I was a kid reading Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, and King Arthur and the stories of his knights. It’s such a colorful time, with knights in shining armour on their noble steeds, righting wrongs and saving damsels in distress, not to mention the brightly colored banners and flags flying high over a tournament list. Ah, those chivalrous knights. They weren’t afraid of any foe, and they looked really good in the Great Hall of the castle, with their shields and flags decorating the walls.

I wrote an entire article in this vein, and then I changed my mind.

What I really wanted to tell you about are all the spiritual benefits of writing. Did you know you get spiritual benefits from writing? Well, let me tell you …

God gave me a dream to write novels and be published when I was still a kid. I seemed to be good at writing, but when I realized how hard it was to get published, and—trying to be practical and realistic—that I was not likely to write anything worthy of publication for many years, I quit writing, and even reading, fiction altogether. For 15 years.

But God gave me my dream back fifteen years later when I was a stay-at-home mom, bored and restless and seeking something, I didn’t know what. I started writing and felt like myself again, as though I had come home, or had discovered a missing arm or leg. Writing just felt so natural, and I realized that God had given me my dream back.

Everyone longs for a purpose in life, hence the incredible success of The Purpose Driven Life. And somehow, I just knew that my purpose in life had something to do with writing. So, all-or-nothing kind of person I am, I immersed myself in writing. But as most of you already know, trying to get published is not for the faint of heart, and I was never known for my toughness. But God will not give you a dream and then leave you to let you work it out on your own.

I wrote a novel, but wasn’t too thrilled with it, so I shelved it. I wrote a second novel and this time I was thrilled with it. However, nobody was looking for the type of novel I had written. People let me know it was virtually impossible to sell a Christian medieval, much less, a medieval YA romance. “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” Luke 18:27.

But God wouldn’t let me give up. He always seemed to give me the encouragement I needed just when I needed it most. Sometimes it was a contest win or a request for a full, and once it was a literal dream, where I had gone to sleep that night crying and telling God I just couldn’t try anymore, just had to quit writing and get a real job. I dreamed that I was holding a cup and God wrote on the cup that he wanted me to keep writing and not stop. And he wrote the words not once but twice.

Still, after three years of trying to get this book published, things looked very bleak. I was discouraged.

Believe it or not, that’s when I really started to realize the ways God had blessed me in my writing journey. Oh, I was still depressed that I’d been trying to sell the same novel for three years and still seemed no closer than I’d ever been, but I began to realize all the friends God had brought into my life through writing. I had more friends than I’d ever had in my life, and that was an answer to prayer. I know it’s hard to believe, but I had a really hard time making friends after we moved. I had an infant, then another baby came along, but the friends didn’t. But suddenly I had friends I could email and who would even call me on the phone to encourage me if I sounded particularly down in an email. And when I come to Seekerville every morning to read the posts and the comments, it’s like getting a Good Morning Hug.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” Eph. 1:3

Not only with friends, but God had blessed me spiritually since I started writing. I began to realize all the ways I had grown and matured, how much I had come to trust God as compared to the worried, always-scared person I had been before. God allowed me to go through rejections—at least 32 of them—and tons of criticisms, some of which are burned into my memory forever, I have to confess. But I had actually learned from the criticism and become a more confident, trusting person. It sounds like an impossibility, but criticism made me stronger and more confident. All the angst and frustration of trying to get published, of being forced to pray and trust God, of asking God what he was doing and why it was taking so long, had made me a stronger, more spiritual person.

God is good that way.

I am not the same person I was 7 ½ years ago when I started to write again. Writing has changed me, but mostly I see it as God changing me through the writing and through what I had to go through to get published. And I like the change.

I believe our main purpose in being put here on Earth is to grow closer to God and to learn to love him more. If that is true, then writing IS helping me fulfill my life’s purpose, whether I had ever gotten published or not, because it forces me to rely on him.

And then God gave me my dream, and it is wonderful. No, Mary, it’s not an Eden-like, blissful, no problems zone when you become a published author, but it is pretty awesome. And the fact that it happened to a person like me, with a book that nobody wanted, just goes to show that “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” Luke 18:27.

With God, there is no such thing as impossible. “Everything is possible for him who believes.” Mark 9:23. So keep believing!!!

What is your life purpose? And what does writing have to do with it, if anything? What has writing done for you? I’d like to hear your thoughts. Leave a comment and I’ll give a copy of The Healer’s Apprentice to one person.

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Melanie Dickerson is a graduate of The University of Alabama and a wife and mother of two daughters. She spends her days in another time and place, which is her excuse for being so forgetful! Her two favorite settings are Medieval Europe and the late nineteenth-century South, where chivalrous, gallant men still roam around saving damsels in distress, and being saved in their turn by said damsels.

See her website,

www.melaniedickerson.com

to find out more about

The Healer’s Apprentice,

the world’s first Christian Medieval Young Adult Fairy-Tale-Retelling Romance.