Friends, you’ve been with me on an arduous journey.
This book has gestated for longer than a baby elephant, and you’ve been with me, for me, praying for me and beside me in each phase of this process. What began as a twinkle became a few classes became a book proposal became a book contract became a deadline and (after missing it badly a few times) became a rough draft and finally a mansucript. That manuscript is now being refined in the capable hands of InterVarsity Press, it’s publisher, and it is working it’s way into your hands from there.
I am so grateful to you, and so excited to start spreading the great grace-filled message of the redemption of our bodies, of how good they are, of how God speaks so intimately and beautifully in and through the very stuff of our selves.
I am so grateful for my guides and helps along the way, many of whom I’ll be talking about in more detail as the release date approaches.
So, enough baiting you. We have a release date! This book will be in your hands in December 2014. That’s right—this year! I’m looking forward to getting advance copies out, running a few promotions, getting to meet some of you in person, and talking to you about what it means to live well in our bodies.
Speaking of living well in our bodies, this seemingly incorporeal thing called a “book” finally has a name. It has real words put to real paper, and a real and finite title that encapsulates what I believe to be an important and redeeming message of wholeness:
Embracing the Body:
Finding God in Our Flesh & Bone
(*whispers proudly* I love it? Don’t you love it?)
It’s going to be a long 11 months until I have this baby in my hands, but I’m excited to share bits and pieces as I can, and have you be part of the process.
In that light, I’d like to invite you to pray with me over these words, this message. Will you pray that it gets into the right hands, that it goes to the people who need it most? I don’t care if that’s 50 people or 50,000 people (my publisher would prefer the latter, I’m sure, but I just want it to bring wholeness, shalom, to those who are longing for it), but I want these words that wove themselves from God’s heart through my body and into this story to heal, to bring hope, to create more spaces for Jesus to move and the Kingdom to come. So, would you pray that? Would you pray God’s Kingdom over this book even now? Would you pray over the pages to be printed and the ink to be spilled? Would you pray over the paper and the dyes and the stamps and the envelopes? Would you pray over the words inspired by the Word, that this book would be more than just another heavy yoke on an already burdened people but instead would be freedom and life and light? Would you pray that this book would be incarnational, sacramental, a real, tangible sign of God’s goodness in the world?
Pray however you’re lead, my friends, but please pray. Big or small, I’m excited to see what God’s going to do with this project of my heart.
So what do you think? What does the title elicit in you? What does it make you hope for? What does it make you wonder about?