Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
You don’t always get what you ask for, but you never get what you don’t ask for… unless it’s contagious! Beverly Sills
Yesterday morning it was my privilege and pleasure to read “When Can We Get A Puppy,” at the Art Gallery of Mississauga. We had fourteen children and ten adults show up. What a fabulous group of kids. The Art Gallery set up two craft tables for the kids which kept them busy before and after the reading. I asked what they thought the moral of the story was, they put up their hands, and the first little girl I asked nailed it. “Ask for what we want and be patient.”
It’s been a long time since I’ve been around a bunch of children and this was the first time I read my story in person. They were the best audience. One said I’m the first author she’s met in person. What a privilege to read to children and get their reaction and a blessing to be around youthful exuberance, energy, and spend time with their young mothers who brought them out. I will be posting the video on YouTube soon.
If someone had asked would you like to read your story at the Art Gallery of Mississauga a year ago? I would think they were joking. It wasn’t written yet, I didn’t know I could do it. March of last year I had no illustrations completed, I didn’t yet have the concept figured out. I did have the story written but not the story as it ended up being printed.
When we look at what other people accomplish we often think they know the steps it will take, but often I bet they don’t know what they are doing any more than we know what we are doing, and if we stay moving in the right direction we get somewhere. The end result may not be what we expected; we may have been scared to even have big expectations.
Do we know what we are capable of before we accomplish something? We don’t know what will come into our lives between now and then that will help us, teach us, or move us along the path. If we aren’t doing anything that same opportunity might come but there is no way for it to help us along a path we aren’t on.
The moral of the story of “When Can We Get A Puppy,” is not about getting a puppy. It is about being willing to ask for what we want, expecting to get it, and being patient as events unfold in our lives that make getting what we want possible. I have suffered at times in my life from not knowing or at least not being willing to say out loud what I wanted.
It might take a lot of work and rearranging of our life to get what we want. We might have to do some heavy thinking to come up with what we want. We’ve gotten used to doing what is expected of us and letting that be enough. We don’t want to ask more of ourselves because it sounds a lot like work to carve out time to write that book, illustrate a story, learn to play an instrument, or whatever it is we dream about but might not voice.
We are divine enough to ask and we are important enough to receive. Wayne Dyer
How do we go see the world when we have a mortgage to pay and children to raise? Maybe it’s a dream that will take time to bring to fruition, that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
We have to be willing to show up and risk failure to risk success. On a Facebook group, someone said something I did when self-publishing my children’s book couldn’t or shouldn’t be done. I said, “I didn’t ask anyone I just did it.” Sometimes the best thing not to know, is how something should be done because you go ahead and do it without those constraints.
Often, it isn’t that it can’t be done, but people have decided how it should be done. For instance, authors are told not to illustrate their own children’s books, and are told don’t make your children’s book rhyme. I’ve broken both rules. I did look at the submission requirements of one publisher and not rhyming was a requirement. Some people think self-publishing is a bad idea. But, I’m not sure why. We can find out if anyone is interested in what we’ve done, move onto the next project, and continue building a life.
I decided at my age I wasn’t waiting years and years for a publisher to say okay when I could self-publish. Is there a down-side to self-publishing? If there is I don’t know what it is. Some say people won’t take you seriously as a writer, well how seriously do they take us when we aren’t published? It seems to me with three self-published books, I’m up on that score. Some say a real publisher won’t consider you if you’re self-published. I doubt that, if they think they can make money publishing work that’s been self-published they’ll publish it. If it makes sense to an author that has self-published that going with a big name publisher will work better for them then they will accept the deal. Win, win for everyone.
We may think we can’t do something, because… A politician in the U.S. is made fun of because she doesn’t have a “higher” education. She’s an elected politician and those complaining about her are not. She didn’t ask permission. Too often when we ask for permission we are told no, but if we don’t ask permission and go ahead and do it we end up where we want to be.
Serendipity works in our lives. We don’t know how it will show up, when, or what doors it might open for us. We don’t know when we meet people if we might be a blessing in their lives, or they a blessing in ours.
Ask for what you want, expect to get it, and be patient as the circumstances unfold in your life to make it happen.
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Matthew 7:7
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better. Maya Angelou
Not getting what you want either means you don’t want it enough, or you have been dealing too long with the price you have to pay. Rudyard Kipling
Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.
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