Are you short-circuiting your own Success? SUSAN HARRIS

It happened so many times that I could not disregard it. Without fail the same song rose in my spirit each time I went into my bathroom. "He who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it…" (a chorus drawn from Philippians 1:6.) When I left the bathroom the song immediately dissipated. In and out, rise and fall of the song, with heartbeat regularity and rhythm.

I pondered on this for days until one afternoon the truth hit me so that I felt as if I'd bumped into an actual object. God was brooding over my bathroom, hovering as over the darkness in Genesis 1:2. In a very tangible way that was not reciprocated elsewhere in the house.

Along with that truth surfaced a memory. In my childhood home we had a few chicks as pets. They'd eventually become hens and lay eggs. One day we did not see our favourite pet, Chickie Ann, a yellow chick my mom had bought us from the poultry store. We searched for her, calling her name, and finally was rewarded with a faint cluck.   Out-of-sight, under a tree in a nest of grass, we glimpsed Chickie Ann's now white feathers. She showed no interest in following us home. It turned out that Chickie Ann was sitting on eggs that would hatch baby chicks. The hen was brooding over the eggs, sitting quietly, patiently, providing the heat necessary for the eggs to spawn life.

Brooding precedes birth. Life.

That night I received a message on Facebook from a friend I'd made through the TWG Facebook page. During our conversation I enquired about her writing. In her reply was a line, "I feel that the Lord is hovering over it…"

The hairs on my arms stood at right angles to my skin. Two women, in two provinces, far from each other, both writing what the Lord laid on their hearts, had the same sense of God hovering over them. God hovered, brooded over the dark waters and then He brought forth something new. Light. A product called earth. Animals. People.

Brooding precedes fruitfulness.

Many times we are called to be still, to be slow, to pause. If we rush that season we would have broken the cycle needed for fruitfulness. We'd have created our own self-destruct. Unintentionally. Had we taken Chickie Ann away from the eggs, we would not have had five new yellow little chicks to delight in. And we would have broken the mother hen's heart, a heart that would have grieved in her own animal way for her babies. When we break the cycle, we not only short-circuit our own success, but we grieve the heart of the Creator at the potential and plans that cannot come to pass.

The book, the illustrations, the dream mandate a time of brooding. Are you rushing it? 

Find Susan at:

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http://www.amazon.com/Susan-Harris/e/B007XMP4QS/

ABOUT: Susan Harris is a speaker and former teacher, and the author of Golden Apples in Silver Settings, Remarkably Ordinary: 20 Reflections on Living Intentionally Right Where You Are, Little Copper Pennies and Little Copper Pennies for Kids. Her first submission to Chicken Soup for the Soul is published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What? edition as Smokey's Lockout, and was released August 19, 2014. Remarkably Ordinary was released in print on November 1, 2014. Her upcoming children's picture book, Alphabet on The Farm will be released in both English and French, and 10 ½ Sketches: Insights On Being Successful Right Where You Are will be released as an ebook on January 2, 2015. Susan was born in exotic Trinidad but now lives on the Saskatchewan prairies with her husband, daughter and the unpredictable cats.