I sat outside a conference room at the Embassy Suites waiting for the first session of She Speaks to start. My entire body felt numb and tears started to well up inside of me. I knew that as soon as I walked through that conference room door, I was answering a call God had placed upon me and it was the scariest thing I had ever done in my life.
For about a year leading up to She Speaks, God had used friends to tell me I needed to write and speak. The problem is I had never considered myself a writer. I did not have a blog and unlike many others who love writing, it was not my passion. I’m a CPA, I work with numbers and spreadsheets. A writer? Definitely not!
Through a series of divine coincidences, God lead me to the Proverbs 31 website where I learned about She Speaks. It took me three months to get up the courage to register and within days, the conference was sold out. My sweet husband was very supportive and offered to drive me because he was afraid I would change my mind, turn around and come home. Several times I woke up in the middle of the night in a panic thinking I had made a huge mistake.
Two weeks before the conference, I got an email completely out of the blue from the Lay Leader at our church asking if I would share my faith journey at the end of August. I had only told one person besides my husband that I was going to She Speaks and it had been a number of years since I had been asked to speak at our church. When I first read the email, I literally screamed and shut my laptop. “What’s wrong?” my husband asked.
“I think God is chasing me down.”
God had given me a deadline. At the time I said to myself, “I can do this.” But I felt like a baby bird and God was nudging me out of the nest.
After She Speaks, I was totally energized and recharged. “OK! What’s next, God?”
The problem is I am a type A personality and I needed God to show me all the details. I analyze things and before you know it I’m paralyzed. I work on a blog, spend hours on end agonizing over the colors, fonts and layout.
Five months after She Speaks, under the cover of darkness, I launch this blog. I tell no one, except for my husband. I write one post and that was it. To this day, no one else knows I have a blog.
A few months later, I organized a mission project for the ladies of our church. After the event, I received an email from the church secretary asking me to write an article for the South Carolina Methodist monthly newspaper.
God had given me another deadline. I can do this. Once again, God was nudging me out of the nest.
Around that time, I accidentally clicked on something on Facebook and joined a group of ladies who were reading through the entire Bible in a year, something I also happen to be doing. I looked at the group and realized they were doing a different reading plan. But not wanting to be rude, I stayed in the group.
Two months later, I receive a Facebook message from the leader of the group. She had launched a website which will be the group’s new meeting place. Being polite, I responded back to her and told her the website looked great!
Then she replied: “Mei, you are invited to be a contributing writer for Team 365…I’m asking the ones who have been faithful and consistent and who I know are great writers.”
I immediately thought, “She must have me confused with someone else.” I had not posted anything to the group Facebook page. Maybe I won’t hear back from her when she realizes her mistake…
A few weeks later, another message, with a calendar to sign up to write posts about our daily readings.
After my initial panic, I felt like God was giving me another deadline. He was telling me “It is time to write and it is time to do it regularly.”
And on that day, God threw me out of the nest.
The LORD has been so patient.
I allowed my fear to overshadow His promises.
I needed to see the details but He constantly whispered,
“Trust me.”
His grace and mercy abounds and it has taught me a beautiful lesson, a lesson which began as I stepped through that conference room door and into the unknown:
“When you get to the end of all the light you know
and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown,
faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen:
either you will be given something solid to stand on,
or you will be taught HOW TO FLY.”
~ Edward Teller
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