Some days, some moments, doubt fills me. I think I’m on the path that God wants me on, then BOOM – life happens. Working on my entry for the Chipstarter 2.0 campaign this past week, trying to edit my children’s book series, and Scott being gone on his dream fishing trip to Canada, made for an interesting week of doubt. I was missing my life’s cheerleader – my husband- who always reminds me how worthy I am to pursue dreams. However, I can look back throughout this week and see where God placed hope in my path to overcome the doubt.

In the place of Scott’s never-ending encouragement, God gave me my daughter at our home this week. She kept telling me she was ready to shoot that video for the contest whenever I was. I wish I had the picture of her tonight as she held the camera and her hand-made teleprompter cheering me on to complete the video. (see my video entry at https://youtu.be/IgDYEtAsado)

I was determined I had to have a Husker shirt to wear in the video. I walked into Walmart, and there was a display of women’s shirts in produce area (who can explain that one?). That black shirt I’m wearing in the video, was laying, sprawled out on top of the display. Again, I see God was communicating ‘shirts are insignificant compared to your calling today, here is the shirt, now go work on the really important agenda I wrote for you today”.

To gather my thoughts, I need drive time. This week spending time with my hubby’s mom was important to me with our guys ‘gone fishin’. Each time I made the hour-long trip to the family farm, inspiration would come to me for the children’s books. I would sit down at the kitchen table when I arrived at the farm and complete another step.

The most powerful God-moment this week came with my deepest doubt. I could not sleep Saturday night. I would get out of bed each hour, complete another project, then try to sleep again, only to repeat the next hour. Bothering me was how unimportant my work was compared to all the videos I had watched on the Chipstarter website, especially the other children’s books authors asking for their dream to be fulfilled too. I just didn’t see my dream as developed as the other authors. I started questioning, ‘was I suppose to write in 1st person or have a narrator? Do I have the right number of pages in each book? Does the book series truly appeal to the age I want it to? Am I crazy insisting on hiring my own illustrator versus letting the publisher find the illustrator?’

Then at the 3 a.m. I-can’t-sleep-project, a blog came across social media… How to write a children’s book in 9 Easy Steps. It was as if she had been in my mind an hour earlier, and wrote a guide to me. O.K. God, I get it, I’ll keep writing, editing, and moving forward on “The Life Lessons of Jax”. However, I’m sure this is the wrong time, just too much going on, so definitely ditch the entry in the contest, right?.

Nope! God had another idea…and I get an alert on my phone ‘submit your dream’!

Suddenly, I ditched most of the write-ups for the contest questions, and the words,…the answers,… the typing…suddenly flowed along with an outline for the video entry. It is just amazing to me how HE throws out the doubt, and makes the path surface when it had seemed to have disappeared under the cloak of doubt.