Florida Christian Writers Conference 2020 – A Recap

Five days. How to change your life in five days? Or maybe how to reinvent yourself in five days?

I chose the title, Processing my Fourth Christian Writers Conference. Kansas City was the first, She Speaks in Charlotte next, then Blue Lake in 2019. Each left me feeling unqualified and lacking confidence. Following Blue Lake in Florida I joined Word Weavers. It was unlike any group I’d been a part of.

October 21-25, 2020, the year of the mask, I attended the FCWC in Leesburg, Florida at the Lake Yale Baptist Conference Center. 

Each of the 130 attendees could sign up for three fifteen-minute sessions with an editor, publisher, agent or keynote speaker. We also had to choose one continuing class from seven being offered. Tough choices, each offered the highest caliber of teaching. We would spend two hours each day with the person we chose. I was with Carol Kent in a class of 12-15. My hand outs are like gold. As much as I wanted to look like her and speak like her and, have the audience  she has . . . I wouldn’t trade even one single day of my life for hers. She has experienced more than her share of heartache and pain.

I carried my backpack with my laptop computer, at least two copies of my spiral bound, 160- page book, a journal, snacks and chargers for phone, etc. Any interest in my book was for a digital copy (not paper). I continued purchasing books from the conference bookstore and adding them to the weight on my back. My load became heavier and burdensome.

Let’s stop right there for a kingdom transition. We can carry a heavy load with us daily that our Abba Father doesn’t intend for us to carry. False guilt, regret, self-pity, unrealistic expectations piggybacking on comparisons to others. We don’t stop to consider if what we are carrying is even pleasing to Jesus. He alone is our audience of One. He alone is the One we need to please. And His Word says, without faith it’s impossible to please Him. Heb 11:6.

Let’s unpack that together. If faith in God is the greatest way to please Him, then carrying guilt is not believing He has forgiven me for any and all sins when He went willingly to the torment of the cross. If my faith pleases God and I knowingly carry regrets and self-pity, I’m denying His promise of abundant life. (John 10:10).

My unrealistic expectations may need to be unpacked also, to determine if I’m seeking to promote Jesus Christ or (Jeanie Connell). If my goals and dreams are to glorify God, then I can accept that nothing is impossible for me and I can accomplish it with only a mustard seed of faith. (Matthew 17:20).

Comparing myself to others may be the heaviest item in my backpack and the most offensive to my Creator. The first three words in Jeremiah 29:11 are For I know . . . Nowhere does the Bible indicate that He has given us the plan or outline for our lives. Instead it reminds us that He is the Potter and we are the clay to be shaped and molded into His image. How sorrowful we make our Father when we refuse to embrace His purpose for us and try to model ourselves after someone else, as if the King of the universe made an inferior choice regarding His plan for me.

Not until the end of the Christian Writers Conference, did I realize that my heavy load was completely unnecessary. I put my backpack away and felt the freedom to be myself. No one left to impress. No more competition. Like a sponge, trying to soak up all the information and experience from successful writers, I was dripping wet. I didn’t want to be squeezed out and possibly lose any of the wonderful gifts I’d been given. Unlike the backpack, I would carry these inside my heart.

Jesus gave me the best present of all, my story. Reminding that no one else could tell it, but me.

Jeanie Connell is an author, songwriter and intercessor who loves writing poems  and devotions. She lives in Franklin, TN with her husband Michael. They are blessed with three married kids and three grands. Jeanie has recently finished writing her God-story, Promise You Won’t Remember. 

LUKE 2:1-20

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Birth of Jesus Christ

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

A Picture Perfect Christmas

Christmas photo sessions with small children are fraught with peril. You do everything you can to ensure that your kids will be good-humored enough to smile like cherubs for a few magic moments, but that perfect photo is maddeningly elusive.

Caleb, our second son, has always been our lowest maintenance child. Even as a baby, he was usually good-natured and happy. We made sure he got a good nap before we headed off to our Christmas photography session at J.C. Penney, but apparently it wasn’t good enough. He woke up uncharacteristically grumpy, and he was in no mood to mug for the camera.

The photographer was a fresh-faced college age girl, and bless her heart, she was determined to get this uncooperative child to feign happiness. By trilling and tickling and cooing and coaxing, she may have persuaded him to smile a few times, but inevitably, those were the moments when his two-year-old brother got distracted or made a funny face. Each time we thought we had managed a good shot, we would gather round the monitor to find some fatal photographic flaw.

Three more children and twenty-plus Christmases later, my wife has learned to settle for “good enough” when it comes to Christmas pictures, but back then she had a healthy dose of young mom perfectionism. She was determined to keep trying as long as the photographer was willing.

Naturally, Caleb did not get any happier as the session dragged on. Neither did I. I began suggesting that any further attempts would be futile, but my wife and the photographer were determined to keep trying.

It didn’t matter that we were going well past the end of our session, or that the next appointment had arrived. These women were not going to let this kid win. Meanwhile, the next mother up was trying to keep her kids happy and unrumpled in their fancy Christmas costumes. I recognized her as someone who had attended my high school, and I kept offering her apologetic glances as she became increasingly unglued.

Just when all hope seemed lost, my wife and the photographer triumphantly captured Caleb in what looked passably like a smile. As long as you didn’t look too closely at the tears in his eyes, it almost looked like a perfect Christmas photo. We quickly ordered our prints and slipped out of the studio without looking the next mom directly in the eye.

We yearn for Christmas to be “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”—as idyllic as a “picture print by Currier and Ives.” Like Caleb, our smiles are sometimes coerced and our eyes filled with tears. That’s okay. Christmas is all about the perfect Son of God entering an imperfect world, and his “power is made perfect” in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

David Lang is a Bible Software developer and author. He blogs at Bible2Life.com and produces Bible teaching videos at youtube.com/Bible2Life. In addition to authoring two reference works for Accordance Bible Software, he is also the author of Macs in the Ministry and co-author of six volumes of Northland Church’s Journey to Spiritual Maturity series.

David and his wife, Lisa, have 5 children and live in Mount Dora, Florida.