Breakdowns and Breakthroughs on the Writing Highway

As I found my writing voice and continued the journey of putting this message God had put on my heart out on paper, I didn’t realize the deeply personal roads it would take me on.

From the beginning of the introduction, my heart and mind were forced to look back at where this all started and to feel everything I have felt along the way. I remember just sitting and reminiscing back to the times I was trying to write about.

Tears would flow, smiles popped up, and pain and joy filled my heart together all at once.

I would have to stop writing at different times because tears would pour down my face, and I couldn’t even see what was in front of me. Teardrops would fall on the paper, and God would meet me there in the breakdown lane on this journey.

Sometimes, in those moments, I could feel God working out that healing process; at other times, conviction came and revealed places in my heart that needed action on my part for the healing to come. I would have to pause, ask forgiveness, or ask for help to forgive where unforgiveness has lived for so long inside me.

In other moments, I realized I had never allowed myself to feel what I needed to feel and to express those feelings to God. My heart was filled with places of deep hurt, anger, and resentment. I had things I needed to grieve, situations, relationships, and other things that I never grieved the way they needed to be.

Oftentimes, over the last many years of writing this book, I have sat with God in it all, not able to move in the writing until I let God work in me.

One day, as I was in one of the breakdown lanes along this writing highway, God gave me a promise. One I have held onto even now as I finish the process of getting this book out into the world. That promise was that when I was done with this book and when it went out to people to be able to read, I would be free of all that I wrote about.

I will continue to battle and struggle with some things until I go home with Jesus. But I will be walking free as all of you read the words on those pages. I believe that because He has promised it, and I see it happening before my eyes as we speak.

Chapter 10 was one of the hardest for me to write and was where my greatest wrestling happened. While going through the editing process, my content editor asked me if I had wrestled there. She could sense that and knew it had been a challenging chapter for me without even knowing me that well.

We have to have a wrestle sometimes to break through.

Sometimes, we have to have a breakdown in order to get to the breakthrough.

That is what happened to me in the process of this writing journey.

Maybe you aren’t writing a book but are in a season of hard things and breakdowns. Perhaps you feel stuck in the breakdown lane right now.

I pray you are encouraged today!

We can have a breakdown and need to pause and stop the trip for a few minutes and take some time there. That is ok! That is healthy.

God is using that place to bring you to the breakthrough. I know it feels hard, and it hurts a lot sometimes. Don’t give up! Keep doing the work and pushing through! God will help you, and you have a friend here who knows how it feels.

There were many moments when it felt too hard. The pain was overwhelming, and the process seemed too much. There were times when the enemy’s voice was loud and tempted me to give up and not keep going with it all.

But God’s voice became louder, and His healing touch became greater than the pain going through it.

I like starting and finishing things. I don’t love the process, and I especially don’t love long processes. But this was a process I will always be grateful to God for taking me through because these breakdowns led to my breakthroughs.

If you don’t grow weary and give up, God will bring you to a breakthrough, too.