TABLE READ: Chapter One (Title Options & Naming Control Blind Spots)

In today's episode, we're discussing book title options and naming blind spots where the temptation to control sneaks up on us. Take a moment to respond to the three questions (listed below) that will help guide me to make this a better chapter. Thanks in advance!

SHOW NOTES

Vote through voicemal (click: “Send us fan mail” ⬆️ ) 

1. Which title is more compelling and easy to understand what the book is about?

Release: Invitations to live from a posture of open hands, open heart, eyes fixed

OR

The Nitty Gritty Practices of Surrender—Invitations to develop callouses on your soul and muscle memory in your spirit to truly let go

OR

Your own combination of the above? (I'd love to hear allll the suggestions!)

2. Where does control sneak up on you? (i.e., Where have you found blind spots in your own life that you were controlling yet fooling yourself into believing that those areas were surrendered?) 

3. What would you want included in this first chapter that would compel you to keep reading without getting overwhelmed? 

CLICK: "SEND US FANMAIL" (SEE LINK AT THE TOP) FOR AN EASY WAY TO LEAVE US A VOICEMAIL ANSWER.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This week we're getting into chapter one of the book that I am racing towards the end of finishing writing so that I can explore options to get it published. It's all about surrender. We're gonna talk a lot about that today. But also we're talking a lot about what my goal is for capturing the reader's heart and making this really applicable and a challenging book that people want to keep on reading. Pull up a chair. Welcome back to the mentors table. My name is Joy, and I am so thankful to have any of you who are listening and willingly joining as a part of this table. The mentors table is a place where you can pull up a chair for deeper discussions about spiritual and emotional health with an uncomfortable focus on surrender. We're actually gonna talk quite a bit about surrender today. And honestly, I just feel that with all of our talks and with all of my counseling sessions and all of my conversations with my husband, and it always goes back to surrender. And so we're gonna dig into that a little bit more as we talk about my book, which is also on surrender. But before we get going, as always, we want to take a moment for just a minute of some silence and stillness so that we can focus our hearts and our minds on God and invite his Holy Spirit and presence into our lives and to guide our thoughts and our understanding. So if you could take a deep breath in with me, release it slowly. If you have not already, put your feet flat on the floor and open your hands, open with palms facing up in a posture of surrender. Lord, we just come to you. We choose to still our hearts, still our minds, cut out the distractions, and focus on you. Thank you for guiding us. In Jesus' name. Amen. I liked having a little extra silence. I think it's important for you to use your own words in your communication with God, but also to really take time for silence. I was just having a conversation with a friend, and I really think that all of the keys to living our best life go back to how much time, T-I-M-E, we are willing to spend with God listening. We've talked about that ad nauseum on this podcast, so I'm not gonna spend any more time on that. Instead, we're gonna jump in with this series for the summer that I'm calling Table Read. Isn't that clever? Mentor's Table, reading through the book that I'm working on. This is a series meant to be a little bit of accountability to keep me going. I need to start submitting this book to publishers and I need to stop editing and just constantly spinning. I actually need to finish writing. There's just a little bit at the end that isn't definitively done. So, anyways, I wanted to invite all of you listeners in. You guys have uh listened for a while now, you know my heart. And even if you don't know my heart, I really value your responses to some of the things that I talk about today to really help me understand what you think would be the most compelling and the most effective way to approach this topic. In the first episode in the series, we went over the prologue and the introduction. And the primary question that I had was, do you read those? I generally don't. Um, there was some really important information that I didn't really want to muddy the first chapter with, so I went ahead and wrote a prologue and an introduction. And then I started to second guess myself, is that really the best use of my pages? And will I lose readers or will they just completely skip over it and miss some of the foundational information that's necessary for the book? So I've already heard back from a few of you with some really helpful insights, and I welcome you. If you have not listened to that episode, please go back and listen and let me know what your thoughts are because I really think that this is an important question. I've already started to get some ideas of how I might reformat the information that I am putting in those first two parts, or maybe consolidate some of the information to make sure that I am really wanting to put my best foot forward. I understand as a writer that Americans especially, but really the world's attention span is very, very short. So it's important for me to put something at the beginning that's really going to hook the reader and keep them going. I don't want to ramble on with things that will lose readers before they even get to the message that is burning on my heart. So if you did not comment before on if you read prologues and introductions and where you think important information should go, I have a fun new way that you can do this. So if you already know, you can go to joyabod.com and there's places to comment there. But if you go to the show notes of this podcast, it's like half a step easier because wherever you're listening to the podcast, there should be a place where you've already got show notes that you can click on. When you go there, right at the top of the show notes, there is a hyperlink that is titled Send Us Fan Mail. And when you click on that, it will take you to a place where you can push a button and just record a voice memo. How cool is that? First of all, super, super easy to do. Second of all, you don't have to stop and write something down. Third of all, if you give me your permission, it may even be something that I can feature in the podcast later on. Please, if you have a chance, I would love to hear from you. Click on send us fan mail and record your little voice memo right there. Today we're gonna dig into chapter one of my book. I think it's important to actually talk about some of the titles that I've been playing around with so that you can get a better idea of where I am going and kind of what the focus of this book is. So here's a couple of options that I had in my head. Now, I have not submitted to publishers yet. I recognize that a lot of this is going to be um edited and changed and taken care of on there and later on. But this is where I am focusing and let me know. I'd love to hear from you which one uh better conveys either what my message is or hooks you as a reader to want to read more. So as we're gonna talk about today, the word that I was given that was the beginning of this entire book is the word release. So initially I thought this is easy. I'm just gonna title my book release. But then I realized that doesn't tell you anything. It may hint at surrender, but it doesn't fully give the picture of surrender. So I am open to switching that word up, but I've been working on some subtitles that I think explain things a little bit better. One subtitle option is Invitations to Live from a posture of open hands, open heart, eyes fixed. And the rest of the book is uh broken up into different invitations and different examples and uh practices to be able to open your hands, open your heart, and fix your eyes on Jesus. So again, that that subtitle is just simply Invitations to Live from a posture of open hands, open heart, eyes fixed. Another subtitle option I was considering, am considering, is the nitty-gritty practices of surrender. Another title, not subtitle, that I'm considering is something along the lines of the nitty-gritty practices of surrender. That definitely gets more to the heart of the matter of what the book is about and kind of lets the reader know that this isn't necessarily an easy thing. If it's nitty-gritty and it's practices, it's telling you it's going to take work and it might be messy and hard. And so I think that that's a little bit more helpful, a little bit more real with the reader. With that, I considered the subtitle Invitations to Develop Calluses on Your Soul and Muscle Memory in Your Spirit to truly let go. Again, invitations is the format of the book, but this idea that it's gonna take some work and we're gonna have to develop some calluses and muscle memory to really be able to surrender, I think is a crux of the book. Again, I'd love to hear from you what your thoughts are, which parts jumped out to you, which parts turned you off, or were just kind of meh and weren't interesting to you. I'd love to hear it all. Again, click on send us fan mail and let me know your thoughts. Okay, so when we get into chapter one of the book, after the prologue and introduction, we're gonna talk about why I'm writing this book and how it applies to all of you, the readers. I always appreciate when an author gives you a little bit of insight and background into where this book came from. My goal as a writer is to make sure that I am authentic and be honest in saying that I've tried living this and I have felt experiences with this topic, and I have failures too. And so I want to be able to speak from a place of authority that says that I am not just going to give you platitudes. I'm not just going to give you like a Hallmark card version of how to develop surrender in your life. I'm gonna give you real, practical, applicable, but also acknowledging hard or difficult practices to be able to surrender. I want to challenge my readers and I want them to recognize that this is not going to be a, you know, Paul says in the Bible, he says that it's great that you're feeding on the milk of the word, but it's time to move on to the meat of the word. And I really, my desire as an author is to provide books that are meaty, books that require some chewing, require some maturity, require some thought. They're not just something that I can drink down quickly and pass over and move on. And maybe even don't always taste the greatest, but that doesn't mean that you throw the whole meal out. It means you've got to dig around and find the really good stuff. So in chapter one, I start off with talking a little bit about how I came about to this book. And like I said with the title, the word release comes to me in 2020. Yes, the 2020. I talk a little bit about what's going on in my life at the time of COVID, and I actually really, as far as choosing a word, that's a practice that I have been using for over a decade. It's something that traditionally at the beginning of the year, I spend time thinking and praying on and choosing a word that I believe God is directing me to to focus on for the year. It's my intentional resistance to New Year's resolutions that seem to always fail and fizzle out, but also having some sort of direction to go with. I gotta be honest with you, and I do confess this in the book that my track record for choosing a word and keeping that my focus for the entire year is not great. This word is probably the only one that I've held on to for more than one or two months before I forget about it. And honestly, and I confess this in the book too, there's a lot of temptation to just skip picking a word because I generally don't even remember what the word is by March. Well, by February, maybe by the end of January. Anyways, you get the idea, and so instead, I have justified not choosing a word because I also, as a person who is very type A, I'm a recovering control freak. I'm a recovering perfectionist, I have a very loud inner critic, and that inner critic is constantly trying to prove to me that I am going to fail or have already failed, so I should stop trying. And choosing a word generally ends up being fuel for my inner critic to continue to prove what a failure I have been. I realize as I'm saying this how much I am exposing how hard I am on myself. I've always thought that I've kept that pretty well hidden, but now I'm starting to realize I'm not hiding that very well at all. And I do assure you I am working on it. Anyways, in the time period of this book, I was kind of thinking about a word and then talking myself out of choosing a word, and then the word chose me. I really felt like I got a download from God that I was supposed to focus on the word release, and this is in the fall of 2020, so I was going into 2021, and I did not know at the time, but whoo, what a year. What a year. Anyways, um my first reaction was that I don't need this. There's a part in my first chapter that I actually say, you know, I was kind of like searching through all the different things that I had going on in my life, and I was like, there's nothing to release. I'm actually managing everything really well. And while I don't get to this until much later in the book, reading through this first chapter again, I look at a sentence like that and I think, oh wow, Joy, you had so much to learn. Just that sentence that, oh, I yeah, no, I'm managing everything really well is a huge indicator of my need for surrender because of the I, the control factor that is in that observation, that I'm managing everything well. There's no release, there's no surrender at all in there. I go on to talk about how I believe that release is directly related to control, and so control is like the weeds that need to be pulled up, and you need to get as you do with physical weeds, you need to get all the way to the root of what is fueling that weed and get that all completely cleared out of your life. And as God continued to work on my heart, uh, He began to reveal more and more layers of where I was controlling aspects of my life and convicting me to recognize that while I thought I was doing a pretty good job, I actually am nothing without God's help. My attempts at control, my attempts at controlling my own life, my family, my friends, my situations, my job, my income, my finances, my everything. All of that is really an illusion of control. I was just making really lackluster heaps of life piles that wasn't beautiful, it wasn't pointing back to the creator, it wasn't impressive, and it wasn't fruit that made other people go, oh, I want to love God too. It was just my messy, barely contained lumps of clay, basically. So as the chapter goes on, I kind of walk you through how God in his patience and kindness began to carefully walk me through and just kind of give me a picture of places where I was trying to control, which showed and demonstrated that I was not releasing things to God and that he ultimately is the one that if we release completely to God, is going to create something beautiful out of this life that he has given us. My goal in all of this is to resonate with the reader and help you see, oh yeah, I also have places where I have not given up control. I don't want to focus on the obvious things that maybe everybody would be like, oh, you're writing a book about surrender, and then they can list off 10 things that every other book about surrender is covering. I'm hoping that I'm covering some things that are not covered in another book about surrender, things that really cause you to stop and chew on the information and apply to your own life, things that are convicting, not condemning like we talked about last time, but things that are convicting, things that are challenging, and also things that give you hope in the sense of if I'm willing to roll up my sleeves and really work at and develop this muscle memory to let things go, then it's gonna be worth it. I need to keep on reading. So my first question for you and I again I'd love for you to send us a voicemail by hitting send us fan mail in the show notes is where does control sneak up on you? So again, we're going past some of the obvious ones, and maybe you think it's obvious, and I still would love to hear it because maybe it's obvious to you, but it's not obvious to the rest of us. But where does control sneak up in your life? Where have you noticed places that you think, man, I'm managing this really well? I got I got this, and oh man, I could Christianize and give you all sorts of justifications and give you scriptures for why that was okay. Like I could twist the Bible with the best of them and think, oh well, but gollows you have called, you have also equipped. So he's equipped me to control this situation. Um, I could tell you, like, well, he's given me certain gifts and talents, and so I need to utilize those gifts and talents. And so I'm using those gifts to do X, Y, and Z. But the reality is I was manufacturing, I was out of my own strength, my own perceived direction, trying to do X, Y, and Z instead of surrendered to his strength and his guidance and direction, do X, Y, and Z. When you have that element of surrender or blended in with your gifts and callings, oh, what a powerful tool you become for the kingdom. Super, super powerful. But if you are just using those gifts and talents and you are cutting off that connection. To God and doing it out of your own strength and your own will, I guarantee it may look okay for a while, but you will make a mess that is really difficult to clean up. And God is good and God is gracious, and He is there with open arms ready to receive you when you come and repent to Him, and He will help you clear it up. But wouldn't it be great if we chose surrender first and then use our gifts and talents in conjunction with surrender and made great strides for the kingdom and brought excellent fruit to our lives as a demonstration of God to the lives of all those people around us. Or again, I'm not saying that we can be perfect, but I am saying that if we choose surrender first, it's actually as hard as it sounds, it's actually the easier way to do things. So again, this is actually my second question. I think I called it my first question. First question was about the title, which one hooked you? Second question, where does control sneak up on you? Click send us fan mail. And I've got to be honest with you, as I've been reading through the book again, as well as thinking on this and preparing for the podcast, as well as just living my normal life, I have been reminded over and over again how much I still have to learn. You know, it is now 2026, five years after I started working on this book. And as recently as last week, I was in a counseling session, and we started to uncover an even deeper layer of control that was just a huge blind spot in my life that I didn't even realize I was operating out of my own strength, out of my own knowledge, and I was weary, so weary from caring and striving for something that God said that oh honey, that's that was never my intention for you to take that and try and do it alone. That has always been an encouragement for you to hold on to and act out of surrender to me and let me take the weight, and we'll do this together. So sometimes it's hard. It's hard to be in a session like that and think, oh my word, why am I the one writing a book about surrender? I don't even see these huge blind spots in my own life of things that I still need to surrender. And yet I think it's so important and it underlines the fact that there really needs to be more discussion about this. We cannot just pretend that we've got the surrender thing mastered. I think a lot of people in when I talk to them about, oh yeah, writing a book, it's about how to actually live a surrendered life. The look in their eyes is generally, oh, I want to read that book. I need to learn more about that. But I gotta be honest with you, right after that moment happens, and I start talking a little bit more about what the book is about, there's like this sleepiness that comes over them. There's this resistance, and it's almost like they kind of go into a trance and begin to resist what I'm saying. Because as soon as you start to talk about the truth and the work that is involved in developing muscle memory to let go, you start to come up against this sleepiness that the church is under, the big C church, meaning people who follow Jesus, who immediately begin to think, oh, but I I don't really have time for that right now. I don't even have time to read that book. I am so busy. I am so hurried. My calendar is so full. I'm really distracted right now with all the other things that are going on. And I just can't even. And I think that it is time for us to break out of that trance, to stop us from doing the work to develop muscle memory to be able to surrender. It's time to wake up, it's time to roll up our sleeves, it's time to do the hard work, it's time to commit to really letting go. The world is going to offer you a menu full of options to numb out, but God, God shows us that a surrendered life is actually the easiest and the best way to live our lives, and we will spend all sorts of time, all sorts of energy, all sorts of money trying to prove him wrong and prove that our way is actually better. It keeps going back to that initial sin in the garden, doesn't it? Where Adam says, Well, I know God told me, and and Eve told me not to eat from that true tree, but I want to know better. Yeah, I do know better. I God doesn't know what's best for me. I know what's best for me. What's best for me is if I try that fruit. And so much of our lives is spent as we talk about this practice of surrender, so much of our lives is spent trying to say, like, oh, God, I know you told me that surrender is the best way to live, but I know better. I actually know that if I do this, if I spend this, if I focus on this, or if I just sleep some more, or I just wait a little bit longer until life gets easier, then I'll be able to find a shortcut to surrender that will make it a little bit easier on my life. It's amazing, right? How much we go back to that over and over and over again. Kind of the root of so many of the sins that we commit. And when I say sins, I know it's kind of a Christianese word and can be lumped into all sorts of different categories, but I'm simply just saying or defining sin as doing things our way instead of God's way. Okay, so my third question to you is what would you want to hear me say is included in this book. So this is information that I'm putting in chapter one that would compel you to keep reading. And again, I realize that I am fighting against the temptation to feel overwhelmed. And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna bat a hundred on writing the perfect chapter that nobody feels overwhelmed and everybody keeps on reading. I realize that, but I also think that it's important that as much as I can capture and associate and connect with my readers and say, yeah, me too, or yeah, I've struggled with this, or do you see an element of control in this situation in your life that may strike a chord and compel them to go, yeah, I need to get that out of my life. So for you, as you're hearing me talk about this, what would you want to hear me say in that first chapter that really would keep you reading and compel you to understand that this book is different than the other books that talk about surrender? Here's some examples of answers. I've already kind of mentioned these, but this is what I want to hear when I'm reading a book, especially a nonfiction book that is supposed to challenge and encourage me. Number one, I do want to hear that the writer isn't perfect, but I also want to know and sense that that writer is speaking from a place of authority. Somebody who comes to you with some, like I said before, platitudes or Hallmark card versions of surrender lessons. I don't have time for that. I want somebody who is speaking from authority and I'm going to allow them to speak hard but really important truths into my life. Number two, I want to know that the writer is coming from a solid biblically based background and that this is going to go deep. This is not going to just get hung up on the 10 verses that everybody can quote. Well, that's asking a lot. The two or three verses that everyone can quote or recognize from the Bible. I want to know that if I'm reading a book, this person is going to go deeper than I have been able to go on the subject. Another example is I want to know how the writer has lived this, not just talking about it, not just guessing, not just kind of observing other people, but they have felt experience in the subject matter because that brings a level of connection between the reader and the writer that is not attainable if they have not lived through any of this stuff. I also want to know that the writer's gonna tell me something either new or it may be old, but they're talking about it in a way that I haven't heard before. But I recognize, ooh, this is gonna be challenging and this resonates with my soul. I know that this is something that I need to read. So those are some examples of things to answer in this third question. Again, I will write all the questions in the show notes so that you can remember and maybe even be looking at that while you're sending us fan mail, or which is my fancy way of saying sending us a voice memo. Go to the show notes, click on send us fan mail. I would love to hear from you your responses on these three things. Okay, and as far as personal updates go, we have prom behind us. It was a lovely experience, and my daughter looks so beautiful and had a really fun time, and I'm super thankful for that. We are jumping into a real quick trip to hopefully visit some of my listeners. But ultimately, we're going to visit some family and watch a nephew graduate. I'm excited about that, and also I'm really understanding now that this is the busiest time I could have possibly chosen to try and get away for a few days. So trying to hold that in balance with everything. And then when we're back from that, it is very close to graduation party and all the things. So it is all happening. Um, many of you may have already seen I posted in my stories, but I also cut all my hair off and went back to a pixie cut. I am loving it. Also, I am loving the people that are reaching out and mentioning it because some of these people I haven't talked to in years, and I was like, oh, a before and after haircut picture really connects me with the people who follow me on my social media. Anyways, I have had a pixie cut multiple times in my past, but it's been a while, and so it's really fun to get back to that now. And now I have lots of um salt mixed in with my pepper, and so it's a lot more textured, and I really like that option. Um, I gotta admit though, when I was looking at the floor at the salon, there was definitely more salt than pepper on the floor than I have ever seen before. Yikes, but that's okay. I love I love the grays that I have. I honestly do. I think that they are um a lot of fun and give my hair just a unique look. Thanks again for tuning in. Just a quick reminder: we are switching to an every other week schedule. So look for a new episode all about chapter two in two weeks. And until then, thank you so much for joining me here at the table. And now, as your way to pull up a chair, go right now to the show notes, click on send us fan mail. I would love to hear from you your responses to the three questions that we covered. Have a great two weeks, guys.