Can I ask you a personal question?

Of all the possible things to be said that day, this was not on my radar.
The question that followed the permissory question was equally unexpected.

Do you have another book planned?

It is very hard to explain the weight the first book was - an unplanned gift, disrupting space and time and finances. I feel a little bowed under the weight of carrying it. I hadn’t intended to birth that work and there were certainly no plans for a follow-up.

How I answered that personal question was that I had ideas, but nothing concrete. And then I strung a bunch of words together that, if I could interpret them here and now would be simply, “I was in over my head. I would need help to do it again.”

So, imagine my surprise when on Friday, November 1st, something new was given to me. A work I did not seek nor even imagine to be in my future and yet…I knew the moment it happened - I cannot say no to this message. It is the culmination of so many thoughts and prayers and tears and meditations over the past seven years. It is so special. And so unexpected.

I am stewarding another message. I am carrying another book. I am…speechless at this unexpected grace.