I’m not at all the man I was even a couple of weeks ago. A decade is ancient history.
I’m not sure if I can peg when it was things began to change so much. My faith has grown steadily, yet some issues were single giant steps which shook my world. I’m thinking I finally came out into the light of the new spiritual dawn after my depression finally died. That would be just a few years ago. I still recall the day when my artificially induced sense of previous calling died, and the depression pretty much went with it.
So my writing style has drifted far, far from what it was back when I was a real grammar grouch. That hit its peak while I was still working in public education. I let a lot of that stuff slide over the years because I simply was not using it.
When the Lord told me I was a prophet full time, and nothing else I did would matter, I wasn’t sure exactly how that would change me, only that it would. As Misty and I work through this TMOC manuscript, I realize this was the first time I wrote something in a totally prophetic voice. It’s an entirely different mental process than writing anything else. It poured into my soul as fiery oral output, and I struggled to keep up with that voice as I posted chapter after chapter here. The product was just barely readable compared to stuff from just a couple years ago.
Don’t get me wrong; God used it and several told me how blessed they were. I doubt anyone can imagine how blessed I was in the privilege of putting it together into human language. Now a week later I’m still groping around and finding a lot of fixtures have been moved in my soul. I didn’t lose anything valuable. I’m not less of anything, just very different. In one sense, I’m much more than before. I know it can’t be explained sensibly to my readers. Then again, if your spirit burned with any of that same fire I had writing TMOC, you know what I mean.
You get to see up close and personal something of what it’s like to be a prophet, at least this one, anyway.
So while I can go back and rewrite my own stuff with all the editorial skill of days past when I made straight-A grades on my college papers, they also don’t really touch the fire in me. When I write from the fire, I’m not even the same person. It’s a side of me which lives, but is silent until there’s something to say. Then it drowns the old me. Nothing spooky, just too obviously different.
So while I continue posting the parables series, I may have that ready for publication first. Such is life. The second edition rough draft is here (site is gone) for those of you too impatient to wait. I’ve already replaced the old files with the newer edited material on my static site. So now the old links will pull up new pages, but the link above goes to a single file you can save your own copy. (Update: Book is published here.)
Can’t wait to see what’s coming next!
