Rachel Starr Thomson

Like most people, I went into the new year with plans.

God came into the new year with surprises :).

Years ago, I committed my life to God. I meant that in a practical sense: whatever He wanted me to do, I would do. And it’s been fascinating, ever since, to see how He leads. I’m really looking forward to this year, because if the nearly two weeks of 2010 are indicative of what’s to come, it’s going to be the Year of the Unexpected!

I planned to teach the usual group of students. God changed that and provided new courses, workshops, editing clients, and writing opportunities to make up for the lost income.

I planned to go to Niagara on a Friday and return Wednesday morning. Circumstances forced a change in plans, sending me home Tuesday morning instead. Just before I left, I got a phone call from a friend (in a my-plans-meet-God’s-surprises situation of her own) asking if I could pick her up at the airport in Detroit on, guess when? Tuesday morning. God had already gone ahead of me to make that possible.

I planned to fly to Florida in February. My friend there e-mailed to say things were up in the air, so could I hold off on booking a flight? In the meantime, our last-minute application for Soli Deo Gloria Ballet to perform with an artists’ initiative in Vancouver during the Olympics was accepted. If I had already booked a flight for Florida, I wouldn’t be able to go. Once again, God prepared the way.

Proverbs 16:9 (NIV) says “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps.” As an author, I know when my characters are planning things that won’t go the way they expect — but I also know how I’m directing them without their knowledge. As a human being, one in relationship to God, I do my best to plan my course in a godly and productive way. But I can rest (and delight) in knowing that God is already determining my steps. He knows where I’m really going and how I’m going to get there.

All that’s really left to me is to live the adventure :).

Rael of Reflective Beauty has posted her review of Worlds Unseen, including this lovely paragraph from an e-mail she sent me. I had a lot of fun reading this review because it’s so well-written — and it points out a few things in the story I really hoped people would notice :).

I wanted to thank you for your well-told story of life and death and tears and growing up, of ashes and newness and the bright, starry thread, of monsters and scoundrels and everyday heroes stepping bravely into battle against evil. Thank you for a picture of worlds unseen, of faith that hopes and believes when the night is dark. Of a King who is coming. Oh, I loved it!

Read the whole review here. If you’ve yet to read it, you can download Worlds Unseen for free (in many different e-formats) or buy the trade paperback. Visit the Worlds Unseen page for the appropriate links :).

Life is as busy and unpredictable as ever! I’m currently in the Niagara area putting together Soli Deo Gloria Ballet productions for Easter and the summer, praying about a possible open door for performing somewhere else (let’s just say “Olympics 2010″ and leave it at that — no, we won’t be dancing at the Opening Ceremonies, something less monumental!), wondering if I’ll be driving a friend to Ottawa in a few days, and outlining a devotional book that will work in tandem with our Soli summer production. Lots of fun, lots to do.

I wrote “Run With a Vision,” on the importance of vision to a homeschooling family, several years ago, but it’s just been published by Kerry Beck at her blog. You can read the whole article here. Although it’s written specifically for homeschoolers, the principles apply to anyone who’s trying to get anywhere in life!

Discouragement is no stranger to the homeschooled household. Homeschoolers are, after all, pioneers. The road less-traveled is always rocky. As a homeschool graduate, I can look back and see lots of things my parents did wrong, but the one wrong thing they didn’t do was give up. They had a vision for what they were doing that kept them going no matter how many obstacles they encountered.

In Bunyan’s beloved allegory Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian passes through a place called the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He is compassed about with danger—a bottomless pit on one side, a swamp on the other, and evil, taunting, blasphemous voices in his ears. He barely makes it through. Later, however, another band of pilgrims pass through the Valley without much trouble. What made the difference? The second band made their journey during the day, while Christian’s was made at night. They had vision, where he only had darkness.

No matter how many difficulties fill your path, if your vision is clear, you will make it through.

Remember the “Work, For I Am With You” article I wrote a while back? It shared a lesson I learned last spring about trusting God for my income, and the subsequent slashing of my student roster:

I went home simultaneously buoyed and subdued. I knew God might allow things to get worse before they got better, and that still wasn’t easy to swallow. But my determination to trust Him was renewed.

A few days later I got an e-mail. My student roster had been cut in half, and I watched my income plummet in a single moment. I swallowed hard, emotionally back in a tin chair with a cardboard cup of tea, riveted to the promises. OK, God, I thought. You knew this would happen. You say work, I’ll work. You’re going to have to build the temple.

Well, last year God provided in interesting ways. Chief among them was by handing me 14 new students from an unexpected quarter after the semester had already begun :). This year it’s happened again: Spring Semester just doesn’t bring in the numbers that Fall Semester does, and this year, I’m not likely to find new students from anywhere. I am down to 35 students, compared to last semester’s 60.

My financial sheets look a little scary at this point. But I’m going to go on record and say that I’m not really worried. Actually, I was contemplating cutting my own student roster down — yes, voluntarily — this semester in order to concentrate more on writing for new markets and expanding my editing clientele. Writing and editing are much riskier endeavours, but they also free up my schedule to a greater degree and give me more opportunities for ministry and creativity.

I prayed about the idea for several weeks and didn’t get any magical visitations to answer my prayers. What I did get was a smaller student roster and another opportunity to trust God. I realize that “trust” is not an element found in many “How to Be in Business for Yourself” books, but it’s been essential to my business — and trusting God has not resulted in disaster even once in five years. I’m reminded again that we all live life, and we all face trials, but Christians don’t live alone or face trials alone. And that’s a very big difference.

Today I plan to start revisions on The Advent. Step 1 is reading through the manuscript as it stands. This is always an interesting venture. I haven’t looked at it since I finished the first draft back in early December, and I have a short memory when it comes to my own writing.  I also need to revise a short story, “Butterflies Dancing,” this month.

To me one of the most interesting things that happens when I reread a first draft is that I discover allegories. The Seventh World books are not straight allegory (none of my writing is, except the short story “Journey“), but they have plenty of allegorical themes and truth shadows. And one of my jobs, when I’m revising, is to look out for those themes and shadows. Some are there because I put them there; some have crept in quite on their own.

For example? All of the Gifted in the Seventh World books are either orphans or were raised without their parents. I didn’t do that on purpose, but it has significance. Likewise, I realized at one point that an inordinate number of the major characters are female, and I didn’t do that deliberately either. But it also has thematic significance: in scripture, the church is represented as a woman waiting for her bridegroom. In the Seventh World, many of those who are struggling to stand against the Blackness are women waiting for their heroes — and most especially waiting for the King, the ultimate Hero and Bridegroom for that world.

To me there’s something truly exciting and joyous about discovering hidden meanings in my own writing. It’s fun, and it gives me new insight not only on the stories, but on life itself.  Whatever your day may bring you, may you also find hidden meanings in it — and may you find joy in the living!

I planned to spend the new year in a sort of glowing rhapsody, resting, enjoying family over the holidays, eating Christmas cookies and reading novels. I planned to be refreshed, excited about the wonderful things to come. I planned to file the last of 2009′s receipts, lay out my goals and plans for the new year, and perhaps start revisions on The Advent. I planned to feel very spiritual and in love with God at this wonderful time of the year.

What did I actually do? I got sick. I don’t get sick too terribly often, but this one really wiped me out. Chest infection, sinus infection, generally weakness and achiness. Starting coming down with on December 26 and am just crawling back into normal life now.

And here’s the thing about being sick: it’s hard to rhapsodize while you’re doing it. It’s hard to plan, to work, to rest heartily (not the same thing as resting because you’re too sick not to), to pray or catch up on receipts or feel spiritual. My new year verse is “Work out of your own salvation with fear and trembling,” which does not mean working hard to save yourself, but living out your salvation with awe, with awareness of all Christ has done to effect it, with the sort of worship that trembles. (Look at it in context — Philippians 2.)

But I don’t feel like trembling. I feel like sleeping all the time and watching old BBC sitcoms.

So it struck me the other night how important the second part of that new year passage is: “For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.” Philippians 3 goes on to talk about putting no confidence in the flesh, about being found in Christ and someday trading our “vile bodies” for glorious transformation and perfection. The point is that we are human. We are weak. We get sick, distracted, and selfish. Without God working in us, all our dreams of true spirituality are vanity, because we can’t make them come true.

But God can. And God is. No matter how we may feel today, He is working in us. And that is exactly why we can live out our own salvation with fear and trembling. Because a spiritual life is not dependent on what we do; it is a response to who He is and what He has done and is doing.

(I am terrible at titles. I realize this post should have a more original one, but who can think up good titles at quarter to 2 in the morning?)

So here we are, the end of one year, the start of another — more significantly, perhaps, the end of one decade, the start of another. There are two incongruous ways of observing the new year, often observed by the same people. One is to reflect and resolve. The other is to go out and get so drunk you won’t remember the new year by the time it gets here.

Now, I’ve grown up in a Christian milieu, so nobody I know actually goes out and gets that drunk (or drunk at all). But these two approaches– approaches to the end of one timespan and the beginning of another, good-bye to the Previously Unknown Now Known and the Still Unknown and Hence Scary If Exciting –  say a lot about the way we treat life, and the way life treats us. Our resolutions indicate that we believe life has meaning, a measure of predictability, and the ability to be influenced by our choices. Our partying indicates that life is completely out of our hands and all we can really do is have fun and try not to worry.

So what’s the reality? Perhaps both. When I look over the last ten years, what stands out most is all the stuff I didn’t expect. Relationships, moves, a new career, twists in the plot that I couldn’t and didn’t expect. Even sad parts, like deaths and bouts with depression. But when I look at my life now, I also see the slow influence of my own choices shaping who I am and how I deal with the things life throws my way.

This is the paradox in which we live. We can’t predict or control life, yet that doesn’t let us off the hook of personal responsibility for a second. That’s actually a very Christian paradox: we believe God made us, shaped us, and directs events, yet we also believe we’re responsible to live in faith and obedience.

If I had to pick a life scripture for this year, this one, which I read two days ago and have been stewing about since, might be it:

Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12-13)

Happy New Year, everyone. May it be a good year, a fruitful one, full of surprises and full of choice.