Mountains and Faith

For the last week my brain has been zinging with ideas for my two unfinished novels and the book on relaxation that may turn into a group study. I feel overcome with relief that this is happening, because it has been so long coming that I was beginning to face up to the fact that my writing of large pieces may be over. 

So how has this new season of fresh thoughts come about?  

I’m not sure I could have answered this fully a few days ago but, in yesterday’s sermon I think I heard part of the reason. The sermon, delivered by Paul Brown from Soham Baptist Church, was based on the healing of the demon-possessed boy whom the disciples had failed to heal. Jesus told them it was because of lack of faith.

Now faith is given to us to move mountains - my particular ‘mountain’ is made up of a loss of confidence in my abilities (from a big knock to my self-esteem) combined with busyness, tiredness and apathy. Although my attempts to draw it turned out resembling a very scruffy ant hill, I know that it’s a huge mountain to move.

I realise I began to tackle this mountain before I had a name for it. I’d recognised the loss of confidence and stopped myself looking at the numbers of unsold books and instead counted the ones out in the world being read. I tried to stop worrying about how few reviews my books received and read some of the reviews instead, seeing that they were good. Most importantly, I begun to look for God’s confirmation that I should be working on books. Tuesday’s writers’ group Zoom meeting helped me there and now I am thinking back to times God has spoken to me about writing and guided me along the way. The busyness, tiredness and apathy are the part of the mountain waiting to be tackled.

When I was working for my Masters in Creative Writing, I undertook a study on writer’s block. Many writers didn’t ‘believe in it’, some had succumbed to something similar whether they thought it existed or not and were not writing much at all. At the time, I could hardly envisage the idea of not writing, but it’s where I have been recently. 

I believe that a mountain that needs my Christian growth of faith to move is rather easier to budge, bit by bit, than writer’s block can ever be.

‘Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.’  Matthew 17:20

Annie Try is the name Angela Hobday uses when writing novels. Her novels reflect her training in psychology, especially the Dr Mike Lewis series published by Instant Apostle. Her most recent novel, published by Kevin Mayhew, is mainly for young adults: The Dangerous Dance of Emma JJ. It features a teen who lives with her foster carer but has overcome unsafe situations in her life and now meets more challenges. Annie is always eager to talk about writing, runs workshops and loves encouraging other writers.