Three Keys to Pressing On When a Project Seems Insurmountable

By Margaret November 27, 2015 The Proverbs 31 Woman

One year ago this week, our website crashed. The alarming part about this was that we hadn’t even launched it yet.

Life is full of adventures, and sometimes in the midst of the daily hustle and bustle it’s good for us to look back, and see how far we’ve come. The entire past year at Sheep Among Wolves Publishing can be summarized in one word – Learning.

We have learned so much since the Friday last November, when our internet cut out just as we pressed the Launch button on our website. And the lessons we’ve learned haven’t been only related to business. We have found 3 secrets to spur you on when your project seems insurmountable.

1. There’s a Lot More to Starting a Project Than you Think at the Beginning.

This is a lesson that everyone can relate to! There are a thousand details to every industry that the uninitiated spectator has no idea of.

A Victorian lecturer, Mr. Dent, calculated that in a common contemporary pocket watch there were no less than nine hundred and sixty-three pieces. This everyday article required forty-two unique tradesmen to be commissioned with work in the process. And this number does not refer to forty-two different workers, but to forty-two different types of business!

Publishing, just like any other industry, is a puzzle that takes many pieces to create a finished product. Perhaps not nine hundred and sixty-three, but still a lot more than we realized when we set out!

Don’t be discouraged by the number of steps it might take you to reach your goal. Recognise that you are making progress.

2. God’s Timing Might Not be Yours, But it is Much Better!

This is the central lesson of my upcoming book Adelaide’s Orphans, so it was presumably something I already understood! However, the past year at Sheep Among Wolves has been a definite illustration of the verse:

“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Is. 55:9)

This morning, for instance, I spent half an hour writing a paragraph for this post. It was based on a misunderstanding of an editing note, which left me with the impression that I was supposed to add an example from the plot of Adelaide’s Orphans. For some reason, the paragraph didn’t come easily. I wrote, and struggled, and re-wrote, and struggled some more. At last I completed the paragraph. This afternoon I discovered that the note had meant for me to give an example from the publishing of Adelaide’s Orphans.

This was not the most gratifying discovery – at least on the surface. I spent a large chunk of valuable time, doing something which wasn’t even productive. Or was it? On second thought, it gave me a practical example of exactly what I wanted to share. On the one hand, it was not my plan to spend half an hour writing a paragraph that was just going to be cut. But on the other, I got a perfect example of the point I was trying to illustrate.

Everything doesn’t come together in our timing. Sometimes we have to wait, when our plans are to rush forward. Sometimes we have to continue even though everything isn’t just the way we want it.

But it has been exciting to see how details have co-ordinated, and information has come together, in a way we couldn’t have planned, because we couldn’t see far enough ahead to have made the plans that really worked out best. That is an encouragement to keep trusting, even on the issues where we don’t yet see the end – not only at Sheep Among Wolves, but in all of our lives.

3. You Can Do Things You Never Dreamed Possible

Starting a business has entailed a lot of miscellaneous work. Most of it has been work we didn’t have experience in. Who would have thought we could launch a website? Or write a blog? Or figure out the coding to make poems appear with separate verses?

These weren’t things that we had previous practice at. Sometimes we were able to look back, and see how incidents in the past had prepared us for them. At other times, we were completely new to the topics we had to tackle.

But step by step we were able to work through them – and this is another lesson that goes far beyond Sheep Among Wolves. It is easy to be overwhelmed by tasks that seem to demand the work of a professional.

But at the core, professionals are just trained amateurs. And amateurs are just ordinary laypersons, pursuing something they are interested in.

If We Could Do It, You Can Too!

Maybe your project isn’t starting a business. Maybe it’s learning cross-stitch, or teaching grammar, or letting your four-year-old help make dinner. Perhaps it’s a goal that sounds easy on the surface, or perhaps it is an impregnable mountain that rises discouragingly against the sky.

It is true that most projects take more than you realize at the beginning. But it is also true that God’s guidance is never mistaken, and His timing is perfect. When you actually set to work, you will be amazed at how much you can do.

So if your website crashes, put it back up. You can’t afford to miss the lessons a year will teach.

Here are 4 posts from the past year that we thought you might enjoy: