There
is a writer’s conference in February in Austin, Texas, co-hosted by Ted Dekker. That’s right, Ted Dekker. (In case you don’t know, he’s extremely
awesome!) I knew when I first saw the
link to this conference’s web page on Ted Dekker’s Facebook that I had to
go. Then I crunched the numbers, and
with the Early Bird Registration, I decided that I not only had to go, but I
COULD go! It would be tight, and I’d
have to start hitting up my friendly neighborhood bulimic vampires at Biolife
regularly to make it work, but it was going to work!
***Bulimic
Vampires: I donate plasma. It sucks out
your blood, separates the plasma, and spews your red blood cells back into
you. More importantly, if I keep my
weight where it should be, I get paid $20+ to go sit and read for an hour. It’s a pretty sweet deal!***
The
Early Bird Registration deadline was September first. But when I logged on on September first, I
found that it had expired at the
beginning midnight of September first, not the ending midnight of September
first.
I
was devastated. It would be $150 more
than I had originally planned.
Then
tuition payments hit, and they hit hard.
Two classes cost a lot more money than one. Then my fur-ever baby got sick and had to go to the vet. And then the dentist decided that they needed
an extra $700. I pay for parking on
campus three times a week and go through twice as much gas now with commutes between
work and school. So, the past few weeks,
I’ve been slowly resigning myself to the fact that this career-altering, maybe
even life-changing trip wasn’t going to happen, accepting it as just one more
thing that I can’t do as a nontraditional student putting myself through
school.
I
got an email from Ted Dekker today.
Obviously, not actually Ted Dekker, but whoever it is who puts together
his mass-emails. They reinstated the
Early Bird rate for a couple of days.
Guys,
I bought my ticket. I'm going to Austin
in February!!!
I
am literally crying right now.
I've
been wound so tight and been so tired ever since classes started up again, but
it hasn't been like the Semester from the Underworld. Yes, balancing school with a full time job is
hard work, and yes I lose a lot of sleep to do this, and yes I have plenty of
moments of discouragement. But during
the Semester from the Underworld, every time I had to drag my exhausted, over-caffeinated
corpse out the door in the mornings to spend 14+ solid hours working and going
to class, I was overwhelmed with the idea that I didn’t belong here, doing what
I’m doing. I couldn’t do this. This was impossible.
But
everything is possible. I can endure
what God has placed in front of me, because I have His strength in me. I made it through that semester, with
straight A’s, I might add. And I’ll do
it again this semester. I can do this because
this is where God put me, and this is what He’s given me to do.
And
into that moment of defeat when I thought that my cross to bear was this
monotonous life of school and work, school and work, school and work with the
actual quest for publication on the back burner until a break in the school
year only to be moved back just as it starts to boil, into that moment of
discouragement and resignation, God had Ted Dekker email me so He could tell
me: “Here, Kaycee. Trust Me. This is what you’re here for.”
Ted
Dekker knows why I’m here. “It’s not so
much about what kind of story should I write, or what kind of story is the
publishing industry looking for,” he said on the video in his email. “It’s about how to be a writer. It’s about how to unlock that space that’s
already inside of you. That’s why you’re
drawn to this, that’s why you’re drawn to being a writer. There is something inside of you that wants
to get out, it wants to explode, it wants to discover, and it also wants to
communicate this beauty that’s deep inside of you, or this struggle that’s deep
inside of you, with the world.”
I
attend the University of Iowa where writers sit in a circle and talk about how
writing is just an elaborate deception about engaging the lies that we tell
ourselves, or that writing is a way to explore the darkness within, and in
order to be successful at it you have to have this gritty edge, that it can’t
be too bright or no one will believe it.
I don’t know if any of my university professors or peers will ever get
my writing, but Ted Dekker does.
That’s
why I’m here in Iowa City, pursuing writing.
And every time the impossibility of it all crashes over me and I start
to panic, that’s the moment when God reaches His hand out to me and provides
what I need, and I’m reminded of what I’m really doing here, and why I’m really
doing it.
I
don’t know what God has in store for me in Austin, I just know that by His provision,
I get to go!
