The Last Five Percent

I clicked the End Call button on my Zoom window, new thoughts still rolling around in my mind. My coach and I had just wrestled through something that was blocking me and in the process, unexpectedly, I felt as if I understood Jesus a little bit better. At least what he might have experienced as he walked out of the desert to begin his public ministry.

My thing was nothing like Jesus’ mission and ministry. No suffering servant prophecy to fulfill or cross waiting for me at the end. I was simply stuck finishing a book.

Two things had me stuck. One, a need to DIY. Two, feeling like a fraud. The book I was working on -- by the way, it was mostly done by this point -- exposed me on both fronts.

The ideas in the book weren’t original to me. I didn’t do the work to discover them, to polish and refine them, to present and teach them to others. They weren’t my ideas, they were someone else’s. Yes, this someone else asked me to turn his teachings into a book, but they weren’t mine to begin with. Definitely not a DIY project.

Because these weren’t ideas I had to work at and wrestle with originally, what business did I have publishing them as a book? I don’t have the academic chops, the Greek language fluency, the years of teaching these ideas to others. Who am I? I remember thinking that if I’m ever interviewed about the ideas in the book it won’t take many questions to expose me as an imposter.

So, I hid from finishing the book. Not because it wasn’t ready. Because I wasn’t ready.

This is what I was working through in that coaching session when this thought occurred:

As he stepped out of the wilderness, did Jesus have doubts? Did he wonder if he was ready for this? If the world was ready? About what people might say?

The questions that rolled through my brain felt like warning signs to abandon the journey and turn back.

• What will they think of the book? Of me?

• What if I didn’t get it right?

• How do I put my name on something that isn’t mine?

• Is another round of edits needed?

• Should I just shelve this altogether?

These questions had locked me up and kept me stalled for months. Days turned into weeks as the “finish the book” task stayed on my to do list. I knew it was there. It wasn’t forgotten. It was just avoided. If it wasn’t finished, then it didn’t have to be published. And if it wasn’t published, then I didn’t have to fully put myself out there. The manuscript that was 95% done. The effort, the work, the process was mostly behind me. I just couldn’t bring myself to finish it and publish.

I also had never really considered that when Jesus walked out of the desert, he, too, had some doubts. It feels spiritually dangerous to consider such a thing. Jesus is safer when he’s only 5% human. Like his divinity quotient means he didn’t really struggle with most of the human experience. And yet, could he have been fully human without doubts or questions? Even when we see it happen explicitly in the story, it’s qualified and contained to just those moments at the end while under extreme duress. What if those recorded times weren’t the only times? I had a new and deeper admiration for him, for his willingness to put himself out there. To “publish”, so to speak, and make public his thoughts and ideas. To complete what he was asked to do.

And what about his disciples, the team of men he began forming right after that wilderness experience? Did they feel unqualified? To receive his calling, to follow his ideas, to take a message that wasn’t theirs and proclaim it to others?

I was asked, invited, to write this book. And the one who asked me could not have been a bigger champion for me in the process. Despite that, I still encountered my familiar mental foes, DIY compulsion and imposter thinking. They had me stuck and in my head again, in the way of completing the product.

I needed what I experienced in that coaching session to get unstuck. Days later, I was putting the finishing touches on the book, including an Acknowledgements section that was not in the original outline -- a nod to the fact this was never a DIY project. And, a couple months later, Figure That Discipleship Out was published.

Jesus had doubts too. The disciples felt unqualified and unprepared to receive the calling given them. All these years later, I can identify more deeply with these men of the faith. It is bigger than just a book.