:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

Today, September 15th, is the official release in stores of my introduction to contextual theology: Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life. It’s been a long journey from my first ideas while a student a Biblical Theological Seminary in the Fall of 2004 to today, and the moment when boxes and boxes of the book, my book, arrived in our living room last Thursday.

My story is a familiar one for the vast majority of writers, beginning with a long line of rejection e-mails. However, back in May of 2007 NavPress signed me on to write Coffeehouse Theology. When my agent called me to share the good news, I kept it together long enough to hang up the phone.

Once the receiver was back in place I trembled and then just lost it completely. It was a sweet, deeply meaningful moment. When I called my wife to tell her the good news I could barely whisper, “We did it!” in between the tears. We shared the most expensive dinner out we’ve ever had that night to celebrate.

Since then I’ve been through so many ups and downs with this process of writing a book, revising, revising, and revising before jumping into marketing. It’s been a very gradual process where one day you have an ISBN number, then another you have a title, soon there’s a cover design, then you have a page on Amazon.com, and before you know it the book is sent to you in a pdf format. It all progresses so nicely, so normally, so nonchalantly.

And then I came home one day to a package with my books (Coffeehouse Theology and the two study guides). It was a wonderful moment, but it wasn’t quite like that day I found out about the contract. I’ve tried explaining this to friends who scold me. One friend has decided she’ll have to be excited for me. It’s funny. I am very excited about this book and the good I believe it can do for Christians, but it’s also very… normal to have boxes of books with my name on them sitting in our living room.

In fact, what I have found most exciting of late is a fairly positive review in Publisher’s Weekly, a kind of validation that all of my work over the past four years is on target.

So these are ordinary and extraordinary times for me as a writer. In one sense I’ve been working on this for the past four years, so there’s this other part of me that feels like, “Well, it’s about time!” On the other hand, I am completely blown away that I have literally fulfilled my dream: to publish a book.