In our family, if we don’t hear from one another often enough, we send out an email asking, “are you trapped under something heavy?”

I have been. I was trapped under 75,680 words of a novel I’d love to find sitting on all your bedside tables this time next year. I doubt that is going to happen. But, I did finish the thing and made the deadline for the Christian Writer’s Guild Contest. Now, I kind of worry that I might not have any words left.

I’m not worried about having enough words for the next novel. I’m still not sure I’m a novelist. But, in case I am, words for the next three books are already tumbling around in my head. Instead, I worry that I won’t have any more words for the weekly neighborhood news column in our local paper. And one of my faithful old, farmer readers once told me, “We hate it when you miss a week.”

Or maybe I won’t have any more words for the front page of the church bulletin. Which people actually read in our church instead of throwing it on the floor. Then they are kind enough to tell me later in the week how something I said drew them closer to Jesus. I don’t ever want to run out of those words.

And, I even worry that I’ll run out of words for this blog and you kind, invisible readers who evidently log on now and then to see if I have anything more to say. So, I worry. But, like I told my friend, Cheri, the other day, the most miraculous thing keeps happening. I’m certain I’ve reached the ultimate limit of my words. That I’ve used up every good word God every invented and have put them together in all the ways my tiny brain can imagine.

Then, I sit down to write to you, Dear Reader, and to tell you  farewell, because I’m all out of words. Instead, I find I’ve written you an entire essay. Evidently, God has and endless supply of words, and He shares them.

They just keep coming out my fingertips…