The first time I actively pursued manifesting—you know, doing what the universal divine wants you to do—was in 2012. I had been attending church regularly for the first time in my life, waking at 5:00 every morning to read my Bible, and engaging in a women’s group study about prayer. It was the first place I had ever encountered the idea that I might alter my list of nightly divine requests. Instead of, “God, can you help me do this thing?” I changed my big ask to, “God, what thing do you want me to do?”
This, I have come to find, is a very dangerous question.
It was a Saturday morning in July when I received my answer, as I was driving to a board meeting an hour away from my home. In those days, I filled my weekends with volunteering, speech and debate, or volunteering to make food for speech and debate, depending on the season, and rounded out most of my work weeks somewhere between the 50-60 hour mark. I LOVED working too much. Working too much was WHAT I DID. I wore it like a Daisy Scout badge, something to prove that I was adept at being all the things to all the people all the time.
So, when I got the answer to my dangerous question, it hit me so hard, so clearly, and so inconveniently that I had to pull the car over and hyperventilate for a few minutes.
Hi Lisa. It’s time to have kids.
The second time I actively pursued manifesting was this summer. Well, it is this summer. I’m in the middle of an eight-week course from Eckhart Tolle called Conscious Manifestation, and although my conception of who or what is receiving the question has expanded a bit, I’ve been asking essentially the same reckless thing I did seven years ago. “God, what thing do you want me to do?”
And for the second time, I received a clear answer that required solitude and breathing into a paper bag to process.
Hi Lisa. It’s time to write.
You see, I was not planning to have kids. Nor was I planning to “pivot,” as the youths say, to a career adjacent to the one I’ve invested many years, many emotions, and many dollars in over the course of my adult life.
This was not the plan. This was not even on the same sheet of paper as the plan. My plan was to stay put and wait for something to happen to me, which, aside from one or two notable exceptions, has always been my plan for everything.
Although, well… when I put it that way, I suppose this does kind of sound like the plan. I was, in fact, staying put—more put than I’ve ever been in my life. And something did, in fact, happen to me. I heard a directive that I tried to ignore until I couldn’t.
So today I did something that is in many ways insane. Today I resigned my teaching position so that I can go be… a writer.
For the record, before I made this insane decision, I listed for God the many and precise ways in which this actually IS insane:
- I haven’t written anything for publication in at least a decade.
- My published work earned me a free book, a magazine subscription, and zero dollars.
- I don’t have any ideas or goals about what I will write.
- I just completed my National Board Certification.
- I just renewed my teaching license for ten years.
- I just moved myself and my children to a new corporation.
- I spent the last year working with lovely and amazing humans.
- I’m a pretty good teacher.
You know what I heard in response?
Hi Lisa. It’s time to write.
Look, I coached debate for seven years, and that is NOT a rebuttal. That is a violation of the very spirit of argument, just repeating things over and over and also being the source of all creation in the universe. Like, you don’t even have to do your research.
I lost the argument. But when I finally admitted defeat, an incredible realization came upon me, which was that, hey, this is actually what I want.
I want to be a writer, you guys. But I’ve always been afraid to admit it, or perhaps simply to admit that I ever wanted anything just for myself.
I am not plagued with delusions of being a great writer, or a rich writer, or a famous writer—and let’s all take a moment and acknowledge that there has never been a human less equipped to be famous than me, other than perhaps Emily Dickenson, who made sure to DIE first—but I do think I can be a happy writer.
So. That dangerous question.
I probably don’t have to tell you that following the first answer, the time to have kids answer, turned out to be the greatest decision of my life. And in spite of the clear and present insanity of the second, I have an inexplicable faith that following the time to write answer will be similarly life-altering, world-opening, and light-creating.
I feel it is my duty to report to you, however, as someone who has now successfully replicated the results of her initial experiment, that if you ask God what you’re supposed to be doing, YOU ARE GOING TO GET AN ANSWER.
It might not be the one you were looking for.
But it may, maybe, I think, be the one that was looking for you.
Well done