What Counts?

Because sometimes the experts are wrong

I am due for an update on my Artist’s Deck, and I promise, it’s coming—I have not stopped working on it, but this message today feels like it’s clawing at my insides and so I am giving it air here. I kind of hate when I read those posts that say “somebody needs to hear this—” but I’m telling you, it’s true. Somebody needs to hear this—and maybe, it actually is for YOU.

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Years ago and agent told me that a book that I had poured actual tears and sweat into “didn’t count”.

I hadn’t thought this until recently when a friend and I were talking about the ins-and-outs of the publishing world. Something my friend said reminded me of that conversation I’d had with an agent who told me, hand-to-heart, that my first book— because it was an indie-pub project—didn’t count in the world of traditional publishing. According to the industry, anything I’d sign a contract on would be my “first book”. Traditional publishers wouldn’t count my previous work. From a business perspective, I’m willing to try to see their point, but I want to talk about what “counting” even means, and who gets to say whose work “counts” and whose doesn’t.

On Ash Wednesday this week, I sat in the pew with ashes on my head and thought about all of the Ash Wednesday’s in my life, particularly, over the last 10 years. Lent is a tender season for one major reason, being that it invites us to really sit in the tension of the work of Jesus in the world at large and in our own small worlds, and how needy we are. Lent is a forty-day reminder of our fragility and our deep, aching need for a Hope that does not disappoint, for a Love that never fails.

Ash Wednesday, I thought about this little book that was never meant (in my mind) to be more than a sort of confession, a little guide for others who might be experiencing a refining season of their own. I thought about how one small “yes” opened a door to another world—one that runs differently than the one where my feet are planted.

When Holey, Wholly, Holy released into the world in 2014, I had no idea a match had been lit. The next few weeks and months began a season of which I had not even known to pray for, or imagine. This little indie-book traveled the globe and was used in churches both foreign and domestic as a Lenten guide for congregations near and far. And then, a retreat was born. I have recounted the numerous shocking Divine interventions time and again over the years, and I won’t apologize for the telling and re-telling because I am a forgetful person who needs to be reminded of God’s faithfulness, ad infinitum. Amen.

So when I remembered that comment the other day from the agent, about this book not counting, I laughed to myself, and perhaps up to God, and said with my out-loud-voice to my bathroom walls—”Doesn’t count?—says who?—let me count the ways!” And I stood towl-wrapped and dripping from the shower, counting the myriad of ways this book has counted—in my own life, certainly, but also in the lives of others. This book literally altar’d¹ the trajectory of my life.

Here’s what I know: Industry metrics and God-metrics are not the same thing, and at the end of the day, only one of them actually counts.

I think the reason this message was clawing at my insides today is because too many times I hear from writers and artists who have been told by this or that expert, that their work doesn’t meet the criteria for publication. They’ve been told, as I have, that that the project that keeps them up at night, doesn’t count, that they don’t belong on the other side of the gate because their social media metrics aren’t big enough to make them count. <Sigh>

I am a small fish in a ginormous sea, and I have seen, with tears in my eyes, the goodness of God in the land of the living when I was willing to say “yes” to an “unknown” outcome of a project, because what I was ultimately saying “yes” to wasn’t really the project, but a known God. And for all of the ways I have known God to use this work, there are innumerable ways it has been carried that I don’t know about. This is true for any of us who put things out into the world.

Here’s what I know: Industry metrics and God-metrics are not the same thing, and at the end of the day, only one of them actually counts.

I don’t know what dreams you’re holding with trembling hands. I don’t know whose permission you think you need to say “yes” to the thing that’s burning in your heart, but I do know that everything you do, counts.

All of it.

None of it is wasted.

You don’t need to know what God will do with the art you're making in order to make it. Your work is to say “yes”. To surrender to the call. To make the thing and let it go out into the world on its own two legs. Hold its hand if you want to, walk it around a bit and introduce others to it, then let it go—all the way—and get on with making the next thing. And the one after that.

Anything you make that’s born out of your passion will far exceed anything you make with a measuring stick in hand.

Everything you make counts, the metrics might just be different.

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{Every word an image in this article was created by my own two hands. No portion of this creative work was generated from the mind of a machine. Any errors, type-o’s or mistakes are all my doing. I am a woman who owns her imperfections.}

1. This is not a type-o. The 10-year anniversary Refine {the retreat}’s theme this year is “Altar’d. We will spend the entire weekend recounting through art, prayer, silence and worship, the innumerable ways encountering God altar’s our lives in every meaning of the word.