Release Day Is Almost Here

The past few weeks have been an absolute whirlwind and I’m still catching my breath. Three Sunday nights ago my Kickstarter campaign was successfully funded to publish my first book, Every Bush Is Burning. The past three weeks I’ve been working feverishly to get final edits, proofreading, and a million other last minute things done in order to get the book ready and printed. It has been very tiring and very, very fun. And despite a really long to do list I have left, it is coming close to an end.

The book officially releases later this week, and the Release Party is Thursday night (which I am SO excited about). The copies for the party are sitting on my kitchen table, and they look amazing thanks to my very talented friend Kent Bateman.

In other words, years and years of work and sweat are finally coming to an end.

Which is…awesome. And exciting. And…also weird and scary.

Because well, now people will actually be able to read it. And some of them might hate it.

Because now, if I have an idea or decide I want to change something…guess what? It’s too late.

I mean, I knew all of that in theory. I knew there had to eventually be a cut off day where I stop the potentially endless revisions and “making things better”…that one day I would have to actually “ship it” as Seth Godin would say. And I knew all along that I was writing it with a specific purpose for specific people, and that may mean there are some others who hate it and leave nasty 1 star reviews on Amazon and say that it’s a waste of the paper that it’s written on.

I knew all of that, but now it’s different. Different because it’s all here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still excited out of my mind. I believe it is a story the Lord has called me to write and I hope and pray He uses it to grab some people and shake them up. I think it was the right time to put “The End” on it and get it out into the world and I have no regrets. I guess I’m just going through the normal creative phase of putting something out into the world that you’ve poured your soul into, something that you love–and knowing that there will be those who don’t appreciate it or like it. I guess one way or another, if people end up loving it or hating it, it’s a good thing that my identity is in Jesus and not in what people think of me–because the alternative would only lead to either ugly pride or a sad despair.

So friends, I would like to ask for your prayers this week, and I would very much so appreciate them. Pray for the Lord to do what He wants with this story, for people to hopefully be stirred and changed and provoked by it. Pray for my heart and motives and for a steadfastness in the Lord that does not gravitate toward pride or despair, whether people love it or hate it. Pray for my sanity and productivity in the last stretch of this marathon. And pray for my wife Kristi as she has to put up with my tired, picky, and sometimes cranky self…

I could go on, but I’ll stop for now. Thank you so much for any prayers you can spare, for real. I’ll be in touch more later in the week.