A New Year’s Prayer

By Elizabeth Musser

Dear Lord,

As 2020 opens like a blank manuscript before me, please hear my heart.

May the words I write this year be well-chosen and crafted to the best of my ability. Oh, I know the first draft won’t be a thing of beauty. But please renew my desire, my zeal, to spend the time thinking about, praying for, and then writing down words that will move my readers to Your Word and Your Truth.

If I’m being honest, Lord—and with You, I know I can be—I sometimes lose confidence that anything I write can be used by You for good. Sometimes the page in my brain is really blank. At other times, I have dozens of ideas bumping around up there, begging to be typed into a Word Document on my laptop.

Feast or famine.

Sometimes the rest of my life crowds in so that I can’t even find my Work in Progress and that feels discouraging. Sometimes life crowds in so stubbornly that there is actually no WIP to be found. Please give me patience with myself in these times, and please let me trust that the gift You’ve given me, the gift of words, will be used at just the right time.

How I want to deepen my trust in You, dear Lord!

And another thing, Lord—thank You for listening to this long prayer—please help me discern where to spend my time on social media. It can feel overwhelming and unmanageable with unseen but very-much-felt expectations hovering about. I need Your wisdom even in this, wisdom to choose wisely and then enjoy the interactions I have with readers.

And thank You, Lord, for those readers. You know how their heartfelt letters and emails bring tears of gratefulness to my eyes. If they didn’t read my blog posts and stories, I wouldn’t have a job.

And oh, what a job!

Sometimes, I take a deep breath as I’m dreaming up a story or signing my name in a novel I’ve written or speaking to a room filled with readers or posting a photo on Instagram, and I think, “I get to do this. I get to do this. I get to do this. I get to do this. I get to do this.” And every word and syllable matters. You’ve given me the incredible gift of doing what I love, using the gift You’ve given me to bless others.

I know it’s a mouthful, but it’s true. A continuing circle of giving and gifts.

Thank You for letting me be alive in the year 2020. May I pay attention to what’s going on in the present so that I pen novels that resonate with the world’s brokenness but also with the hope of redemption.

Thank You that Your Word never returns empty. So may I fill up on Your Word in this New Year until it spills out all over that blank page. For Your glory.

Amen.

Elizabeth Musser writes ‘entertainment with a soul’ from her writing chalet—tool shed—outside Lyon, France. Her new novel, When I Close My Eyes, just released in November of 2019.  Find more about Elizabeth’s novels at www.elizabethmusser.com and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and her blog.