There’s a word that, when uttered, either makes most people cringe or nod in agreement, depending on which end of the spectrum they fall.
Discipline.
So, which was your reaction—a cringe or a nod? I actually handle the D-word quite well, but I was trained in the art of discipline, first in earning my bachelor’s and teaching degrees while raising kids and then throughout my years as a middle school teacher. I would tell my students ad nauseam how important discipline was to their success. If they’d only delay gratification and get their homework done before the fifteen other things they’d rather do after school, they’d feel the weight of their core teacher lifted off their shoulders for another twenty-four hours, and their grades would reflect it.
This is true for the success of anyone who has ever dreamt to do more with their lives than simply get by. I believe that God puts a dream (or dreams) into the heart of every one of His children, but life often gets in the way of realizing it. There are kids to raise, bills to pay and crises to deflect.
It was in the midst of one of my most challenging crises that I felt God stir me toward the dream He’d planted in me over twenty years before. My daughter Nikki was recovering from traumatic brain injury—a week in a coma and then inpatient rehab for six weeks to learn everything again from the ground up. I was with her every day of her recovery, laptop in hand, and whiled away the hours she slept by starting a book. It wasn’t a great story, but it was a beginning.
I was given catastrophic leave to stay home with Nikki for the next six months while she continued her rehabilitation on an outpatient basis. There was more down time than I was accustomed to and I continued to write. And write. And write. That book sits in a binder in my office to this day, in desperate need of edits and rewrites, but I don’t have the heart to let it go. It was what made me realize that God had another plan for me, a bigger plan than I thought possible.
Over the years, as I’ve seen God shape my life into something I couldn’t have imagined for myself, I’ve often thought about how that crisis with Nikki was the catalyst for His plan. I couldn’t know that a year later, my husband would abandon our marriage and finally force me to my knees in surrender to Jesus. Nor could I know that He had a godly marriage in my future with a new husband who said, “If God is calling you to write, you should step away from teaching and give it a shot.” Nor could I have known that Nikki’s near-fatal accident would be the inspiration for Illusions, my second novel which will be released in April.
Over the next several weeks, I will share five short videos of Nikki and me discussing her car accident, how the brain injury affected her, the blessings that came from it and how it pertains to Illusions. My hope is that you get a taste of that journey and decide to see how the inspiration played out in the novel.
So, back to discipline. I do this quite often—spiral off on another subject and then have to find my way back again. Nothing worth doing can be accomplished unless we learn the art (and grind) of discipline. Can I get an Amen? I’m sure there is the one-in-a-million story about so-and-so who fell into success. But it’s a rare thing and not one on which I’d rest my dreams.
Is there something you yearn to achieve—maybe a pipe dream that seems too outlandish to consider? It probably is if you lack discipline and the realization that you need the Creator of that dream to work alongside you. Maybe your life hasn’t turned out as you envisioned it, but I guarantee you, God will use it. He will use every false start, poor decision and weakness we have to achieve our dream to His glory.
The dream starts with Him, but the discipline has to start with you.
Comments 1
Definitely, AMEN