@LynnHBlackburn

Several years ago, my dad made a beautiful mirrored coat rack. I had the perfect wall for it and it hung in a place of prominence in my home where it received oohs and ahhs from friends, family, and guests.

Then we moved.

Our new home has an open floor plan with short walls. Most of the long walls are full of windows. There isn’t a single spot in the house that made sense for the coat rack. I guess I could have hung it in the dining room. It would’ve made a great conversation starter, but it also would’ve made it functionally useless.

So with nowhere to put it, I placed it in a hall closet where it sat unused for six months before I realized I was being an idiot because there was one other spot where it could go.

But it was so wrong.

No one but my family would ever see it. It seemed such a waste.My coat rack doesn’t belong there. It’s too pretty. Too precious.

Then again, I knew my dad never intended for the coat rack to take up space in a closet.

He intended for me to use it.

So we hung it . . . in the garage.And we’ve used it every day since.

As I went through this process, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels to my writing.

I don’t know about you, but when I started writing, it never occurred to me to write anything other than a book. After all, isn’t that what realwriters do? They write books, make a fortune, buy a cozy bungalow, and churn out more books as they sip coffee and eat scones. Right?

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of books. I like writing them and I like reading them. Some of my best friends are books.

But what if you’ve been working on a book forever and no one is buying it? Maybe it’s time to rethink the purpose of your writing.

If you’re convinced that God has gifted you with the ability and desire to write then God has a plan for those words. I’m certain He didn’t intend for them to be stored on a hard drive where they won’t do anyone any good.

Maybe there’s a book in your future. I would say you should keep working on that! But in the meantime, you can write blog posts, devotions, and articles about whatever God leads you to say.

Then you can leave it up to Him to use as He sees fit.

God may plan for our words to reach thousands. Or He may plan for our words to reach just one.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll admit that my pride likes the idea of thousands. After all, we live in a world that focuses on the numbers. Preferably big numbers.

Thankfully, we serve a God who uses everything at His disposal to go after the one lost sheep.

Maybe He’s using you.

Or He would, if you’d let Him decide where to put you.

Grace and peace,

Lynn H. Blackburn loves writing suspense because her childhood fantasy was to become a spy—but her grown-up reality is that she’s a huge chicken and would have been caught on her first mission. She prefers to live vicariously through her characters and loves putting them into all kinds of terrifying situations—while she’s sitting at home safe and sound in her pajamas!

The second book in her Dive Team Investigations series, In Too Deep, released in November. She is also the author of Beneath the Surface, Hidden Legacy and Covert Justice, which won the 2016 Carol Award for Short Novel and the 2016 Selah Award for Mystery and Suspense.

She lives in South Carolina with her true love and their three children. You can follow her real life happily ever after at www.LynnHBlackburn.com and on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.