Last summer, God laid a book for women struggling with grief and depression on my heart.

I rapidly wrote the waterfall of words cascading through my mind down in a journal over the course of a week, but, now, almost a year later, I have failed to complete my manuscript. I’m avoiding that draft because it just feels too raw and too real. I know this book is going to require a lot of work, confession, forgiveness, tears and healing before I have a finished product ready for my readers.

The truth is, though, I’m not writing the story, because God has already written it. He’s simply asking for my faith and my obedience in getting those words onto the paper.

Four Letter Words: Finding Hope in a Tiny Wild Life by Krista Wilbur

Last week, my beloved For the Love launch team sister, Krista Wilbur, published her first book, Four Letter Words: Finding Hope in a Tiny Wild Life. Her courageous and beautiful account of triumph over childhood abuse, abortion and sexual assault has wrecked me and convicted me, in a way that few books ever could. She’s making me brave just by living her “tiny wild life” out loud right in front of and in community with me.

As my friend and fellow writer, Krista has given me “Permission to Grow” simply by accepting the call to tell the story she’s been given. Today, I am so incredibly honored to get to share a piece of that story with you.

A special Permission to grow

I am his bestseller (excerpt from Four Letter Words by Krista Wilbur)

Love is the Storyteller who writes masterpieces with the ashes of tragedies.

I have seen it and am seeing it now with my own life. My life, the novel of my days—of my triumphs and heartbreaks and victories—is a story unfolding in front of me. It’s looming and I hope there are more pages yet to come than those I have passed through. I can’t be sure of that, though. But I know one thing.

I am not writing this story.

My story is already written. It has an ending, and I’ve spoiled the ending already for myself—but I am so glad I’ve read the last page. Even if I can’t tell you the details, I know the climax of these chapters and years, of the mountains and valleys, the unfolding bits of grace and mercy in my life: eternal life with my King—not judgment or death but everlasting life, everlasting life that is a product of the richest and purest love this earth has ever known.

Of all the things I’ve ever wanted to write in my life, the beautiful words and the words that make you stop and reread…All of the words I’ve wanted to speak into being and into other people’s lives…For all of that want and desire, I want you to know:

I am so glad I am not writing my own.

I would have left unwritten the best parts. I would have fast-forwarded through the lessons in forgiveness and grace and love. I would have missed the breath-taking moments, the orange and pink sunsets, in favor of the dimmer sundowns. I would have missed God’s blessings because I would have skipped right past the moments of struggle. I would have said no to the tears and yes to the average and mundane, to showing and not telling.

I would have tried to skip the grit and in doing so, never have lived to see the glory.

But God never made me mundane. He made me loud and bright and colorful. He made me an extrovert and crafty with words and a lover of people. He didn’t write for me the boring roles full of dull colors and one-liners. No, when He wrote this story I am living, He wrote me in with passion and strong, vibrant lines.

I would have given anything as a teenager to tone it down. To blend in and do life like everyone else. I tried. So many mornings I woke up and thought, “Today. Today is the day where I just act like everyone else already.”

And every day, I failed because that is never who He intended for me to be because He loves me.

He is giving me this great and beautiful life to live and a great and beautiful story of redemption and grace to tell.

He is whispering to me, “I colored outside of the lines with you. I picked the vivid crayons, the ones with the crispest points to make the sharpest lines. I never wanted you to fit into the rest of the world. I have always wanted you to stand out…for Me.”

I am so glad He is writing me.

He has written me as poetry, fluid and approximate, as I have traveled these years. He has written me as prose, stubborn and boxy and detailed as I’ve walked these decades.

He has written me, line by line, a bloom of petals on pages.

He writes me still, in my stillness and when I cannot hold my body still. I am just living the words He already has written for me.

Page by page. Each day the bookmark is placed in a new chapter, a new season. The plot thickens. I am a mystery He is writing but I know how it ends. With this story He has begun a good work and He will complete it because He keeps His promises—before they are ever lived, when they are only a mere whisper of words on His pages.

He has engraved me into the palms of His hands. I am, for this reason, His chosen genre and His bestseller.

So I will live my story boldly because He loves me enough to ask me to tell it.

Krista Wilbur

Krista Wilbur was born in Ventura, California. Although she’s moved around too many times to count in her thirty-odd years, she has spent the majority of her life within a 15-mile radius in Ventura County. Krista earned her B.A. in English with an emphasis in creative writing from California State University, Channel Islands and her M.S. in Counseling and Guidance from California Lutheran University. She works as a full-time administrator of her church.

Krista loves to travel to visit her far-away friends and she loves spending time with her family, including Ryan, Mel, and Charisse and their three dogs Chloe, Pepper, and Penny, affectionately known as the #smoochablepoochables. You can follow Krista on Twitter and Instagram at @kristaonpurpose or read her blog at kristaonpurpose.com.