Ready, steady, launch! (Or, Life as Normal) Finding Myself in Britain

It’s 1 October, or October 1, depending on your vantage point, and thus the official launch date of Finding Myself in Britain. It feels a bit odd, however, as for me it’s just a normal day – I’ve taken CutiePyeGirl to school, am now writing in my study, and later will go into town for my second class for the master’s in Christian spirituality at Heythrop College. A normal day. We launched the book at church on Sunday – which was amazing – and I have three speaking gigs next week – which is also amazing. But this week isn’t so action packed, and today is just another normal day.

Photo: Alan Light, flickr

I keep repeating that refrain because normal is good. Normal is normal. Normal is rooted and grounded and has lots of room for humility. Normal is tidying up the house and working in the garden and doing the school run and washing the dishes and sitting in the sunshine while writing.

As I think about normal, I’m grateful for my years of working with important people. When I was in my twenties I worked for the Trinity Forum, an outreach to business executives. Think the movers and shakers of top companies – Really Important People. Yet as I got to know them and their spouses, I realized that they were just people too. Okay, so they were unique and motivated and smart and amazing, but at the end of the day they had to take their trousers off one leg at a time just like the rest of us.

And then as a commissioning/acquisitions editor with HarperCollins UK and Zondervan I also got to meet some Really Important People. Movers and shakers within the Christian world – those with their fingers on the pulse, writing books like the Archbishop’s Lent book or the one-off Word on the Street (Rob Lacey). And as I dreamed with them about their next project and coached them editorially, I saw that they too were just people. Creative, visionary, motivated, and fantastic. But people.

And so I’m glad that today, when my book-baby launches officially, that it’s just another day in the vicarage. I don’t ever want to forget that I’m just another person; just another writer. And that’s not to downgrade who I am – I know I’m made in the image of God and therefore am amazing. But I want to be rooted and grounded and never too haughty to be the one to take out the trash or clean up after a sick child.

Bye, bye, book-baby! Hope you’re adopted into some wonderful families!