While You Are Waiting

Today is a hit splits episode for author audience.

Welcome to the Author audience show. The podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Hey, hey, how are you today? My name is Shelly Hitz. Hello. And I'm coming with you. I'm coming at you with a topic today that I think a lot of us struggle with. Sometimes it's waiting. How many times have you heard the saying, don't pray for patience because you know what will happen. You'll get some sort of thing happen in your life that requires patience? I don't think I'm a very patient person on my own, obviously. I mean with the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit filling me, which is patience. I have that patience. But normally on my own, I just love taking action and you know, I just want to go, go, go. So when I worked as a physical therapist, I worked with a hospital in a non profit organization and we would always have to go through a ton of different red tape to get anything done. It drove me crazy because I was like, let's just go. It's a great idea. So as I've been working for myself full time over 4 years now, I've been so used to making a decision and just doing it. If that's what I feel is right or think is right. After researching, praying about it, talking to my husband, I just go.

But there are some things in life that require us to wait. In July, it was July 23rd, I just looked it up. I submitted an article to a national magazine for consideration. One of my friends said that he had a contact there and I just thought, oh, I really feel like this is a step that God wants me to take. And I never heard back. I never heard back. They said eight to 10 weeks. And if you don't hear in eight to 10 weeks, just assume that they you don't want your article and you can submit it somewhere else. Well, the eight to 10 weeks finished and it was about 10 weeks and I ended up emailing back just to verify. I said, you know, it's been 10 weeks. I just want to make sure that, you know, it's, it's time to move on and this isn't an article that you want. It was actually good that I followed up. You know, follow up emails can get annoying at times, but if you only do like one follow up email to someone, it can actually be helpful. I found this to be very helpful when I'm requesting reviews. If I give one follow up email to a reviewer. I was just telling someone this today in the Author Audience Academy forums that if I give at least one follow up email and I give that email with a deadline like I'm going to have a book launch this next week. If there's any way you're able to get that review posted before then, I would just greatly appreciate it. I get pretty good response when I give that one follow up email. But back to this other one. I submitted to this national magazine and I gave the follow up email and they said, oh, we're so sorry, we've just been swamped and we just have way too many submissions to really handle. And I was like, okay, no problem. Thank you so much for letting me know. Well, wouldn't you know it? Today, October 23rd, three months later, two months after I sent or two weeks after I sent that reminder email, I get an email from them. Now this is not guaranteeing that my article will get published. So that's why I'm not saying the name of the magazine or what it is yet. But it gave me hope. It's like, wow, so this is. They're interested, they think the topic is good for their audience and they want to go the next step. So I submitted my article for the next step.

The lesson in this is sometimes we want things done right now. However, we don't know everything going on behind the scenes. We don't know what's going to happen in the future. We don't know the right timing. And it's really interesting because this particular article is based upon the book that I'm writing right now called Broken Crayons Still Color. I was wondering, and I've been praying about it, like, am I supposed to be focusing on this book right now? Because I have so many other projects, I have so many other things to do right now that it'd be easy to push the date for this book release back right now. It's still set for mid December, but I have been really feeling overwhelmed and so I've just been looking at everything I'm doing and I was thinking, maybe I should push this book release back. Then today I get this email and I'm thinking, oh, wow, maybe I should make sure that I finish this book because if this article gets accepted, it would be great publicity, a great connection for promoting that book.

So I encourage you to take a deep breath, to have some patience. You know, it is hard to be patient. I understand. I am not always patient for sure, because it's so easy to, you know, in our in our quick society, to be like, you know, I want it now, and I want to know the answer now. But sometimes we just need to wait for the right timing. And in today's segment of Godly Gain, I just wanted to share with you the scripture from Galatians 5, verses 22 through 25. And this is where it talks about how when we're filled with the Spirit, we have patience, or what the Bible sometimes calls long suffering. I'm reading from the new King James Version, so it calls it long suffering. But it says, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Always a great reminder that if you are a follower of Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you and you have his Spirit, which is patience with, which is peace, which is joy, which is love. You have that. And when we live in the Spirit, it says, let us also walk in the Spirit. Sometimes our flesh wants to rush things, wants to hurry things. I have this picture in my office and it says, God says. And then it says, satan says. And the one about God, it says, God stills you. Satan rushes you. Sometimes when you feel that, that urge to rush something or to have to have it done right now.

Stop and pray because it may be coming from your flesh. And I encourage you to surrender it, to surrender it to God. And that's eventually what I did. I got to the point where I said, okay, God, I really would love to. To have this happen, to be able to be published in this nationally recognized magazine. I'd love to be able to share my testimony because in this article, I share a really raw part of my testimony. I'd love to be able to share this, to reach more people with the message that you've given me. And as I say this, I'm getting teared up.

Because I know it's powerful. I know the message is powerful. But I leave this in your hands, Lord, and I give it to you. And again today, I'm doing that again. There's no guarantee that my article will get published, but I'm leaving that in God's hands today.

Thank you for joining me again for this edition of HIT Splits. These editions are just spur the moment, spontaneous. They allow me to share with you, share with you my heart, share with you what I'm learning. Share with you in real time and not really have to get it on the blog post and format everything. But I appreciate you. I really appreciate each one of you that are tuning in and I encourage you to come join us if you are interested in having a support group people to pray for you. I've joined or I've created a group called GodlyGain.com and you can sign up there and get access to this free Facebook group with other Christian entrepreneurs just like you. So I encourage you go to godlygain.com and I'll see you in the Facebook group. Thanks again for joining me. I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.