A year ago, I went on a  silent retreat for a time of rest and spiritual renewal. It deepened my spiritual life in ways I hadn’t thought possible. Alone with God in the silence of my heart. What a wonder! For the first few days I remained quiet before Him, not asking for anything, not doing anything. Just being with Him. I walked the live-oak lined paths at El Retiro, in awe at the sense of His presence. In awe that He, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings …  my gentle Shepherd, walked beside me.

As I approached “reentry,”  however, I found my heart drawn back to life outside the retreat house, and the issues I would face once I climbed into the taxi and drove to the airport. My concerns for my  family and friends filled my heart as I thought about their needs and challenges:  my 91-year-old mother’s failing health, a best friend’s losing battle with cancer, my dear spiritual director’s desperate fight for his life,  the unspoken heartaches being borne by immediate  family members … and my own concerns (minor in comparison) about a new direction I was about to take with my writing. As I walked the peaceful, forested, holy grounds, I laid my loved ones in my Savior’s arms. Many times, my heart broke over their sufferings, and I prayed that God would give them His strength, that He would fill their hearts with courage.  I came upon a statue of the risen Christ during my meanderings, and knelt before it as I built a small altar of stones, each representing a loved one.

I asked God for clear direction about the leap I was about to make from contemporary “cozy” mysteries to historical fiction, tackling a difficult subject — polygamy in the early years of Mormonism. I had researched and written about this subject before, though not digging as deep as I knew I would be for The Sister Wife. My heart was filled with compassion for the women and children I’d recently seen rescued from fundamentalist LDS (FLDS) compounds in Texas and Arizona. Could I bring their plight to the awareness of readers through the echo of the practice of polygamy over a century ago? Was the contract I was about to sign with Random House God’s direction?

I would love to tell you that a deep and glorious Voice rumbled out of heaven and told me, “Yes, Diane, this is the story I have for you to tell.” But nothing like that happened. I don’t know about other folks, but I’ve never heard such a Voice. Sometimes I “hear” a whisper in my heart, and know it’s the Spirit within me speaking … but mostly it’s not about anything specific. Rather, the Voice sounds very much like a Psalm or other bit of Scripture that’s buried in my heart and comes to the surface at just the time I need it … I always sit up and pay attention when I “hear” those Words because I’m pretty sure where they came from.

As I prayed for direction, I found myself again at the statue of the risen Christ on the hilltop. I again knelt before my Lord and made a little altar of stones, this time giving my gifts back to God. Rather than the question being, “What would you have me write next, Lord?” it became, “I give my writing to you, Lord, to do with it as you will. If I never write another word, that’s okay. I give you my heart and every word that’s in it.”

A sense of peace flooded my heart — also a sense of joyful expectancy — but I still didn’t have a clear-cut answer. That afternoon, I came across a passage of Scripture that I’d underlined years before: “Write the vision and make it plain upon the tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it…” Habakkuk 2:2-3. I read it again and again. Was this my answer? Or did I just want it to be?

Sometimes we don’t get the full answers to our questions when we expect them. Sometimes God’s answers aren’t those we want. Or they come long after we’ve asked. Or not at all. Our God isn’t an easy God. He doesn’t fit into the boxes we’ve made for him. Sometimes He gives us answers that threaten to break our hearts, yet even in those He is teaching us to trust Him with our gifts, with our tomorrows, even with those loved ones we’ve wept over.

The Sister Wife has been out a little over a week now, yet the reader letters I’ve received have touched my heart with a sense of wonder. One of the most significant , which I wrote about in my journal two days ago, was from a reader who had just finished The Sister Wife — J. Walter Young, a descendant of Brigham Young. His words sparked something in my heart that, yes, this series — odd as its fit may be in our conservative Inspirational market — was of God and for God and from God. His gift to me. Mine to Him. And His to Walter and others who have walked the challenging path away from Mormonism.

I received another letter this week, this from a member of the board of directors for Americans Against the Abuses of Polygamy. Her words about the book and the series encouraged me as we exchanged notes about her group and its mission to help women and children in polygamist communities — especially young girls, sometimes only 12 or 13, who are married against their will to older men. These are human rights issues, abuse-against-children issues. Appalling issues. These aren’t issues I had in mind a year ago when I built my little altar and gave my writing life to God. But I am fully confident now that He led me to this place, to this series, for reasons I’m only beginning to understand.

As I work on the plot and characterizations in book two of Brides of Gabriel, I remember my questions at my little altar, I remember the holy ground I trod as I pondered those questions, and I rejoice that, scary as this may be for me, the words from Habakkuk have greater meaning now than they did then:  “Write the vision and make it plain upon the tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.”  I can’t begin to understand all it means to my writer’s heart and to those who read my words, but I as ponder the notes I’ve already received, and the words from Habakkuk –  that he may run who reads it — I have to sit back in wonder.

Blessings of love, joy, and peace to you this day!