Years ago, my husband and I were leaders for our church’s youth group. During that time, we held a youth retreat weekend called Seek the Source; two days of workshops, food, Bible study, and games, all designed to encourage teens to “seek the source” – Jesus Christ – and to grow in their relationship with him. It was a blast.
I hadn’t thought about that event for ages, but it came to my mind the other day as I was sitting in Starbucks happily writing away. I was on a roll. After an hour, I was passing the 2,000 word count mark on my manuscript when the unthinkable happened. A warning message popped up on my laptop screen. Battery level is critically low. Save your work now. Or something like that. What?!? The battery was bailing on me after just one hour? Fortunately, that particular Starbucks has a number of outlets for laptoppers and I prepared to move to a table that could accommodate my crisis before I lost all my writing momentum. But alas, I realized that I had forgotten my charger at home.
Do you have any idea how disheartening something like that can be? Here I was, free of writer’s block, in the middle of some really good stuff, motivated to keep going, and I had to stop everything right then and there.
I could see the power source, but I had no way to connect to it.
There’s a very simple truth here. I may allow myself to run down from time to time, but as long as I seek the power source – Jesus Christ – and stay connected to Him, I can continue my life’s journey fully charged. I don’t need to depend on Starbucks having an available outlet. And it doesn’t matter if I forget my charger at home. Jesus is there for me to plug in anytime, anyplace. I hope you have some idea as to how awesome that is!
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I went home that day, plugged in and kept writing – 5,000 words in two days. That’s good.
Very good.
Inside the Writer 