I mentioned previously that Quick and Simple magazine might be running a feature on yours truly. Last week I got a call and the article was in the final stages of being edited and re-edited. They had contacted the photographer who took the pictures for the FIRST article last fall and were investigating getting permission to use those photos.
The next thing I knew I received an email saying the editors pulled the article. Cancelled it. Killed it. It won’t be printed.
Believe it or not (I don’t!), my first reaction was actually heartfelt compassion and discouragement for the writer who had worked on and off for months on this article! She had waded through pages of my testimony, spoken with me on the phone, only to be told they weren’t interested in it (she freelances). Then the editors had changed their minds months later…she had worked and worked on it yet again…and in the last hour she was told it was off. All her work seemed to be for nothing.
Being a writer myself, I know that must have been excrutiatingly disappointing. I have labored over a work before only to have it die…be left forever on my hard drive and never see the pages of…anything. So I really understand.
From my perspective…funny, but I actually feel that God has done me a *favor*…given the things I have struggled with, the pride, the focus on ME and “MY” success…all the things I have shared here previously…Yes, He definitely did me a favor!
A part of me wants to apologize to the writer and let her know that it is my fault…not the fault of the editors–that if I had been able to give God glory while the world gave me the attention, had I been faithful to keep pointing to Him, maybe God would have chosen to let this article meet the pages of a national magazine. But it wasn’t His timing for me. There are many things I have yet to learn…
Just now, as I read John Piper’s Desiring God blog – an entry on “Unseen Purposes for Disappointment,” I read the following statement:
John Piper goes on to say: “He is doing a thousand things for you and for his glory in your disappointed plans.”
Perhaps I should share this with the writer of the article-that-will-never-be-printed. I know I feel hope, anticipation…there is something so much better ahead than the “glory” of seeing “my” story splashed across the full-color pages of a national magazine.
I just love your honesty. I am disappointed the article won’t be run, and see your point, but maybe, just maybe the article “not” being printed isn’t about you at all. Maybe it’s because of satan, our adversary, who wants to keep God’s truth from a lost, dark world. I have seen your openness and honesty. I see you as one of the most kind, humble person around. God does have something bigger and better in store for you my friend. To God be the glory. Praise Adonai!