Fish-Belly Dreams: Encouragement for New Writers

by Ashley Worrell  @byashleyworrell

I’ll never forget the day I walked out of my HR career forever. With my dying anthurium plant in hand, I walked down the government building’s corridor, uncertain of my choice. I’d worked my whole adult life to achieve this ‘dream job’, making money I never thought I’d make, and having doors open to me I never thought possible. Yet the Lord was calling me to leave.

The employees I’d worked with walked me out to my car, hugged me, and cried, and I was sure that I had to be the world’s biggest fool for quitting. Even though I’d been feeling soul-deep conviction for over a year to leave my career, and to trust God, I wondered if I was suffering a mid-life crisis or had lost my mind. I knew things were going to get worse before they got better. And boy, did they.

The following year, I broke my promise to God and worked three more HR jobs finding the same issues in each office, and the same conviction to leave. Moving for one of those jobs, I faced a post-pandemic housing crisis and living in a tiny, unsafe apartment. Not long after, some close family relationships fell apart, and the wheels came off my church life too. I was a woman without career, home, family, friends, or church.

Things got so bad that in July 2022, I sat on my sofa and cried. My faith rested in so many things other than God, I’d forgotten who He was. Trapped in the belly of a fish, I cried out for mercy, finally ready to obey.

I put a question to God that day: Lord, is there anything left in me that could serve a purpose for you? His answer called me to declare my dreams to Him and trust Him with the outcome. I knew what He was asking for. The only dream left in a beaten-up heart. I wanted to write.

What a foolish desire. I didn’t have a good idea for a book, and I didn’t know how to write a novel. Over and over, in the pages of my prayer journal, and in the words of scripture, He kept calling me to tell Him what I was dreaming. After assuring Him it was ok if the answer was no, I got up the nerve to ask. Lord, if You are willing, can you give me the story? If you give it to me, I will write it.

I woke the next morning with every detail of a story. What I needed to accomplish the writing God gave in abundance– friends in my local ACFW group, a new church home, and a safe place to live. For the first time in years, I was joyful. The fruit of that prayer was not the novel, but the work Jesus was doing in my heart as I learned to depend on Him.

A few months later, I got an email from ACFW inviting people to enter Genesis. After a years-long fish belly stay for disobedience, and the Lord pressing on my heart, I went for it on a whim. That little tale God gave me ended up as a semi-finalist. What an overflow to a request for a bit of mercy to drink.

New writers—let me encourage you that story on your heart is one only you can tell, for the one God wants you to reach. If you are thinking of becoming a writer, trust who you are with who He is and dare to dream.

Ashley Worrell is a repentant HR professional, thankful to be writing adventure stories instead of disciplinary notices. Since leaving the HR world in 2021, she has become a full-time writer and 2023 ACFW Genesis Contest Semi-Finalist. Connect with Ashley on Instagram @byashleyworrell.