Finding the Fun in Your Unfolding Adventure

The Glorious Table is delighted to welcome Tosca Lee, New York Times bestselling author of the recently published Firstborn, to the table today.

Last year, this devoted city girl married the man of her dreams: a kind and gentle (and, okay, super handsome) farmer and single father.

In the space of “I do,” I became a farmer’s wife and instant mom of four in a plot twist by the Ultimate Author that, three years before, I didn’t see coming.

To my friends and family, this turn of events was unimaginable, even as they watched it play out. Divorced for nearly a decade, I had sworn off marriage after my neat outline for my life had gone horribly awry. I had given up the dream of children, allowed my severe clinical OCD free reign in my perfectly-ordered townhome, and devoted myself to my career as a devoted night owl known for her vampiric sleep schedule and fear of the morning sun.

Now here I was, in love with this single dad and his kids. Preparing to move to a farmhouse where I was as likely to find a wrench in the kitchen as a paring knife, a BB gun resting against the dryer, and a raccoon in the garage. Ready to dive into the new challenge of motherhood with the same determination, organization, and planning as I had the most recent decade of my life.

Yes, I totally hear you laughing.

Today I live in a house full of boys with a dog that drinks from the toilet. (Every time I sit down on a wet seat, I don’t know who to blame.) I still have moments of frenzied list-making, pantry organizing and time-scheduling in a clutch for the illusion of control, but it turns out the same lessons I learned in the process of writing ten novels also apply here:

• Outline all you want, but the story always takes its own twists and turns
• The God of the process is the God of the result
• The main characters are always changed in the end

I now own three Crock-Pots, am convinced this “balance” thing is a myth, have yet to receive my parenting manual or energy supplements from the Office of the Comptroller of Parenthood (anyone have contact info?), but show up daily to bring my talents and imperfections to this page and do the work, and see where the adventure takes me—knowing that even as I try to influence and shape the lives of these children I now call mine, the results belong to God and I’ll be changed in the end.

On hectic days, my husband reminds me of one more statute of writing and life that I always forget along the way:

Have fun.

My kids are very serious about their fun. For them, fun is a full-time pursuit, which constantly inspires me.

Every so often, I see an article on Bing about some newly-discovered strange sea creature or jumping spider. They’re colorful and weird, and I wonder why the God of the Cosmos created them, because until now, no one’s appreciated them—so what purpose do they serve?

Possibly none. Maybe the Ultimate Creator was just having fun.

There’s an adventure unfolding in our story. It has an arc. It has a conflict. The characters will be placed in peril in pursuit of the goal. It will never go quite as expected—it never does. But it will be a satisfying and perfect denouement to the story God is writing with, and about, and through us.

Let’s have some fun.

Tosca Lee is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Firstborn, The Progeny, Iscariot, The Legend of Sheba, Demon: A Memoir, Havah: The Story of Eve, and the Books of Mortals series with New York Times bestseller Ted Dekker (Forbidden, Mortal, and Sovereign). A notorious night-owl, she loves watching TV, eating bacon, playing video games and football with her kids, and sending cheesy texts to her husband. You can find Tosca at ToscaLee.com, on social media, or hanging around the snack table.

Photograph © Bradley Swenson, used with permission