It was unassuming enough, that Monday when the laundry was piled high and the kids were being loud. Mondays are just loud. They don’t ease in, they crash in with their cold reality and harsh expectations to get things done, done done…but they’re also a fresh start. They mean a clean house, clean laundry and clean hair.

But this Monday was different. This Monday felt different. I opened up the email that had been setting in my inbox, whispering like an ominous breeze and the wind left my lungs. The harsh reality of the world came crashing into my living room scattered with laundry and jagged dreams. I was reeling in the aftershock.

“Contract Cancellation.”

I read the words. I laughed in shock and unbelief, then I cried. Then my mind began a whirlwind of doubt, of confusion, of disappointment, of anger, of hopelessness, and the cold claws of grief.

Contract cancellation for the book nearly a decade in the making, a contract that felt like the “yes” my heart had been longing for and ultimately the confirmation that I needed in order to see this dream — this book — become a reality.

Yet beneath all the surface turbulence, there was peace.

You see, if the story that I wrote truly wasn’t the right timing, right fit, right everything for the publisher in the end, then it also wasn’t right for me.

In the ashes, I was left asking. What is right then? What is right for me and this story? Can I let this story lie down in the ashes of a “no” forever? Can I be like the millions of other writers who have laid down their dreams and expectations for a book in shelving it indefinitely?

You see, I’m so desperate to apprehend who I am on the other side of this story. What could I write? What new dreams could come to me? I long for freedom that comes from completing a task, well-done.

But this one, I can’t let go. Or perhaps I won’t. Or perhaps it’s both.

Perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment. Perhaps I’m too stubborn and too committed to one story that I can’t move on. Perhaps I’m just a fool.

The difference about this story is I would have to face the man who lived it. I would have to tell him that the world of Christian publishing has ruled that there is no “market” for a story about a boy and a tiger in a faraway country. That it doesn’t hold the value of its competitors in the incredibly loud universe, all vying for dominance. All trying to tickle the fancy of a fickle world.

I couldn’t do that. I can’t do that. I was called to honor this man and this story, how can I do him this disservice? This is not how the story will end, if I still have yet more fuel and grace for the remainder of the journey in me. If there is still yet an ember to flame.

Doubt, enters.

Maybe I wasn’t called to do this in the first place. This plays like a loop in my head. Because if I had been called, wouldn’t this road have been easy? Wouldn’t the way have been clear? Wouldn’t I feel “favor?”

Favor.

What is favor supposed to feel like? I’m not sure that I know. But I have read of Joseph who was God’s favored but was slandered, betrayed and thrown into prison. Of Job who lost all, but retained integrity. Of Mary whose heart was pierced when she watched her Son die. Those are not how their stories end.

How can favor be limited to a feeling? How can the lack of favor be embodied in a no? Or a thousand? Or a million no’s on this side of eternity?

I’ve had so many no’s. So many.

Perhaps favor is not merely found in the lack of difficulty, but in the One who sustains and makes a way through it. Like the Red Sea, like the furnace, like my broken contract.

Yet, onward I go, because I truly believe in my inner being that this story is worth it. Not because I’ve written it, but because God has and He’s also writing mine. Perhaps the way I’ve written it will get rewritten and rewritten and rewritten (as it does in the editing process), but it won’t change its heart and the truth of what it looks like, feels like and reads like to be redeemed from one of earths most gruesome darknesses.

Perhaps I too am being redeemed, in the process.

Perhaps I have not started in vain, persisted and persisted and persisted in vain.

Sometimes the no’s are the greatest gifts He has to offer us, while He invites us to let go of the short sighted vision we are so desperately clinging to in exchange for His. If I truly believe that He is a Good Father who gives good gifts to His children (Matt. 7:11), then onward I press.

He is the goal.

Onward I go.

I pray you do, as well. Through your own dead ends, broken dreams and gut-punching Mondays.

It is not the end.

This is not yet the end of your story, either.