maybe there's a book in there.

I should know better than to make business only-strategic-heartless decisions. 
I'm a heart girl. 
And while one of my new years resolutions was to use the phrase "I feel" less, I shouldn't avoid big old thoughts and plans without feeling, you know? 

I'd made a strategic decision about the upcoming conference and another eBook a few weeks back. In all vulnerability, I hadn't prayed much about it or sought guidance from others. I knew I needed to prepare a message for my session at Influence and I knew I wanted to write another eBook this year. Neither had me up at night with my heart beating out of my chest. I didn't have some burning thing that I wanted to sit and have coffee with women and share with them, like I did with Be Quiet. But I could see a void and see a question permeating through the community and I chose to write on the idea of "getting it right the first time" as an answer to a void, not so much from a place of vulnerability or expertise. 

I started doing a little research. A little reading. Again, not enough praying or sitting still or feeling. I kept going with my normal routine - take on too much, freak out, cry in the shower, take a few things off my plate, get a crazy idea, take on too much, repeat. The conference barreled forward in the best of ways and some of the crazy ideas worked and this is our life - it's ok. It's very much what you would expect from a family of 2 parents, 3 kids, 1 full time pastor, 2 full time entrepreneurs, 1 full time mom, 1 full time dad, a 4th baby on the way, and new endeavors + opportunities + ideas popping up daily. 

And then, there I sat, in the hospital. 
With a nurse checking my bleeding and searching quietly for a heartbeat with her magical, hopeful wand. And the danger I could so tangibly perceive to my unborn baby - done very possibly by my own intensely sad cycle of life, I could immediately attribute and perceive threatening the rest of my life. 
My other kids. My ministry. His ministry. Our marriage. Ourselves. 
We weren't doing it right the first time. 

The next day I texted him, needing to hear the truth. 

"If I spoke or wrote on 'getting it right the first time', it would all be a lie, right? Things have to change, don't they?" And in grace & truth, he simply texted back "yes". 

So I'll still get up and do my session at the conference and I'll still possibly write the book as time allows. But the only authority with which I'll speak or write is from the assured place that I have failed at getting it right the first time and I'm a great big display of God's grace - trying again today, again tomorrow, again the next.
To get it right the first time. 
For His glory. 

post edit: the hospital visit I mention is the one I took a few weeks ago. 

baby is still doing ok and I'm sitting down a lot to keep it that way:)