My Gift is in His Hands.

I made the statement years ago, “My Gift was in his hands.” I was talking about my father-in-law, who was a wonderful artist. He was egotistical, an angry man and hard to like. I watched him paint and believed I could do it. He was definitely the one who introduced me to oil painting. With an old canvas and brushes, he showed me how to paint. I don’t know if I could have discovered painting without him.

I used that example in a Bible Study. I told the students that sometimes the person who is the hardest to love is carrying our gift. Grant it, I know the gift is within us, but it might be another person who has what we need in order to develop our full potential and have better lives.

Those people have been “Holy Ghost Setups” along our journey. The people around us are vital and important. We can’t do it without their help and we need to recognize it.

This is how it works. While I was learning to paint, my friends were learning to write. I’ve got a lot of smart friends around me. I need to know what they know and what I didn’t learn along the way.

This week I thanked two of my friends for knowing more than I knew. They were taken back by surprise. “No,” I said, “It’s true. You have disciplined yourself over the years. You were willing to learn beyond the ordinary writers. You’ve honed and invested in your craft of writing. Now that I’m writing, I need what you have. My gift is in your hands.”

I asked a friend if she would please edit my final draft before I send it to the agent. I told her there were just a few minor corrections.

“Of course, I’d be glad to do that for you.” My friend is an avid reader and reads with a red pen in her hand.  She said, “It’s funny I lost my red pen, but when I was hiking, there was a red ink pen lying on the path.”

I told her it must have fallen out of heaven. She needed it to read my book. Ha Ha.  Oh, my gosh, I wasn’t ready for some of her comments. When I picked up my edited manuscript, she had written two pages apologizing for having made all the corrections. She wrote, “I LOVE YOU, BUT I’M GOING TO BE BRUTAL. If you weren’t my very good friend, I wouldn’t be so honest.”

I thanked her for being honest and I meant it.  I was glad she was honest rather than me being embarrassed later and losing a possible agent and editor because of my lack of knowledge.

Page after page, the red ink bled with groanings that couldn’t be uttered. She wrote, “That was the stupidest sentence I’ve ever read.” Then there were places where she wrote, “Lalalalala and BORING. You need more passion with that scene. I can’t tell if he’s angry or sad.” Other places where my friend was totally invested, she penned,  “I wanted to slap him, but then I wanted to slap her.” Now, that’s good news. She was into the story and that’s the way it needs to be written.

She said, “When the girl has the baby, you wrote,  ‘It hurts’, and then the baby comes. You’ve got to write more on that scene.”

I told her I didn’t want to go through all that crying and kicking the wall with that birth scene. She said, “It’s necessary and you have to write it.”

After I read through her comments and made the corrections, she asked me if I was still talking to her. I reassured her that I was thankful for the great critique and I loved her even more for taking time to make my book better.  I wouldn’t have caught those things on my own. I was too close to it. Also, I’ve put two years into this book I don’t want it to be just a so-so book. I want it to be really, really good.

I went for my weekly visit to my editor friend and read her my other friend’s comments. I asked her if that was the stupidest sentence she ever heard. She said, yes. As I was reading aloud where she had made corrections and where the red blood was dripping, her dog started crying and moaning. I said, “Listen to your dog, she’s in pain. Even the dog knows my agony.”

As I worked with my editor friend on this novel over the last year, she’d say, “You haven’t set up that scene, you can’t introduce it now. Let’s go back and set it up.” Or she’d say, “You didn’t show that trait in the character. It’s foreign to how you’ve set him up. You have to set that up before he can do it at the end of the story.”

I started thinking about our lives, how the beginning and the end of our stories line up. If those things aren’t set up in us along the way, we don’t have the goods to give out what we’ve been asked to do. Also, as we live our lives and invest into what we love, it might be possible that someone’s gift lies in our hands and they need what we have to fulfill their life’s potential.

Final Brushstroke! I thought of Christmas and what this season really means. God has freely given His Son to us. His Gift is in our hands. As my friend writes, “I love you, but I’m going to be brutal. If you weren’t my very good friend, I wouldn’t be so honest.”  Jesus was born to die for our sins. The red blood of Jesus flows in order that we can have Life. It is our job to recognize how much we need His Gift. Don’t let the bright lights and mistletoe divert you from the real reason for Christmas. I’m just being honest.