My First Publishing Success!

My thing is fiction. It's what I write best and it's what I love. So when my mom came up with the idea that I should enter a devotion writing contest for teen girls, I wasn't so sure. The prize for this contest was a scholarship to a writer's conference in North Carolina. Conference equals a lot of people and I'm a very introverted person. So I couldn't have cared less about this idea.

I also like photography. The picture you see on this post is mine. We have a garden of beans and they were just beginning to make their way through so I got out my camera and began to take pictures. As I played with the angles of my camera on the rows of beans, I spotted a tiny green stem pushing through the soil. I could just hear it grunting breathlessly as it tried to break through. "I know exactly how you feel," I whispered to the sprout. For my whole life I've been the quiet girl, trying to break though the hard, clumpy dirt. That night as I laid in bed, God inspired me to write. It didn't match up with the rest of the devotions on the site, which was what they wanted to see, but I strongly felt God guiding my fingers as they bounced on the keys. I finished my devotion and sent it in, more because I felt I was supposed to do it rather than I wanted to do it. A couple weeks later, I got a call telling me I was one of the winners. I was stunned. I didn't know what to say. I just stood there with my mouth hanging open like an idiot. But when I got off the phone, it hit me. I won a contest! I never win anything! (which is actually sadly true.) To read my winning devotion click here: http://radrevolution.blogspot.com/2009/06/time-to-grow.html. The conference takes place July 31-August 2. We'll see how God helps me grow!