There Is A Time

 There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

 

I know this isn’t the version you’re probably used to but if you can read this passage without singing “turn, turn, turn” at the end of the line, you’re stronger or less musically educated than I am.

One of my friends recently asked how we (writers) manage the monster of comparison. I’m not sure that the act of comparison is the problem as much as the responses of envy, arrogance, and self-pity. But part of my answer involves walking around the park where I live in Florida. When this first happened, I was living in a motorhome that was more than thirty years old and that had not been as well cared for as it should have been. In short, it was a junk pile searching for a junkyard even though the basics still worked.

In the same park, there were park-model double-wide mobile homes of comparatively recent vintage with wide-screen TVs visible through the windows and motorhomes at least as long as ours but with two, three, or even four slide-outs. I remember my ego bleeding. Why did they get to have what they had while I was stuck with what I had? After praying for some time, God told me that what I had was what He chose for me to have for the moment. He asked if I would accept that choice for me for now.

We had to have that conversation more than once, or at least, I’ve had to review that conversation more than once over the years. When I see other writers making money at their craft, I struggle. Part of the struggle is because I know I’m not doing all I should be to market my books, and part of it is because this is where I am right now. It is not my time to be what I think is successful. Am I willing to accept that? Am I willing to accept the blessings I receive instead of the ones I want when I can get my attention off of what I don’t have, and on to what is going on in my life, I can see blessings? They just aren’t in the form I want them to take. Am I willing to accept that for now?