This is the question I’ve been asking God for the last seventeen months. And deep down, I think this is what I hoped His answer would be:

 

“Nothing, Kati. I just had you write over one hundred pages about your deepest darkest source of shame so it can sit untouched on your laptop for the rest of eternity. You never have to share it with a single soul. It’ll be our little secret.”

 

And I was a-okay with that.

 

When I first started telling couple of trusted people in my life about the existence of this book, I told them that the reason I knew it came from God was because I wrote it with the intention of sharing it with exactly one person. I did not write it with the hopes of publishing it and becoming a bestselling, world famous author like I’d dreamed of since childhood.

 

I wrote it because I needed to write it. Because I couldn’t not write it. Because the words just came pouring out of me like tears and I had no choice but to let them.

 

Because it was a story I never planned on telling, which tends to be the kind God asks us to tell.

 

There are so many things I could share with you, ways that God has been answering this question since that sunny March morning when I closed my laptop and laid down on a pier and took my first breath as someone who had written a whole book. There are too many to share in this newsletter, especially since I have another announcement we haven’t even gotten to.

But here is what I will share:

 

As of today, I am working on a second draft of the book.

 

Working on this draft was the catalyst for my big decision to go part-time at my day jobs, to finally treat writing like a career instead of something to squeeze into the margins of my life.

 

Back in February when I started on the second draft, I found myself waking up early every morning (which, if you know me at all, is a Big Deal), sitting down in front of my laptop with steam curling from my coffee mug and fairy lights curling around the edges of my desk, and telling this story all over again.

 

Adding new words, new moments, new memories.

 

Remembering the deepest pain and the sweetest comfort.

 

Reliving some of the hardest things I’ve ever been through and — strangely — loving it.

 

Because woven through all those dark and broken shards is the softly glowing thread of my Savior’s kindness, and by telling this story I get to bear witness to it all over again.

 

And then these moments were shattered by the alarm reminding me of the real job I needed to get to. And so I stood up and left that desk heartbroken and restless, counting the hours until I could return and continue unraveling my heart over a keyboard.

 

This was the reason I took one of the biggest risks I’ve ever taken.

 

This book. This story.

 

This was why I wandered off the path I’d been sure I was supposed to follow, led by a Light that burned so much brighter than every hope and dream and expectation I’d been clutching desperately to my chest.

 

And this Light is telling me I don’t have to be afraid of sharing my darkness anymore. Because the truth is, this story doesn’t even really belong to me.

 

It belongs to Him.

 

Every word. Every chapter. Every torn and crinkled page that I wanted to burn in the fire of my shame. I may have been responsible for the first draft, the one with all the mistakes I couldn’t erase, but He came along and turned my smudgy, tear-stained, unreadable mess into something beautiful.

 

 

 

In the coming days, I’m going to share a little more with you about my story. You will be able to follow my journey in real time on platforms like Facebook and Instagram and this newsletter.

 

But for now, let's talk about Switzerland.

I first learned about Mary DeMuth through Instagram.

 

I am very careful about which Christian voices I follow on social media platforms these days, but hers struck the perfect note for me. Every word of hers seemed to sing with a pure, gospel-centered joy, but she also wasn’t afraid to lament over brokenness or raise a battle cry for justice.

 

Plus, she made pretty watercolor paintings.

 

As time went on, I learned more and more about Mary. She is a wife and a mom. She has written multiple books. She spent time as a missionary in France. She hosts a podcast called Pray Every Day, where she reads brief, Scripture-based prayers over her readers. She is a literary agent who represents Christian writers in the publishing world.

 

And every year, Mary DeMuth hosts a writer’s intensive in Switzerland.

 

One of my favorite Christian authors is Jessica Harris. Jessica runs a website called Beggar’s Daughter where she writes openly about the topic of sexual sin and shame among women. In 2016, she published a memoir about her own journey as a recovering pornography addict.

 

Her latest book, Quenched, is my top resource to recommend for any girl or woman struggling in this area. She was one of the first people to pave the way for women in the church to start having these conversations, to talk about this thing that for so long was seen as a “man’s problem.”

 

In a blog post where Jessica describes the journey to getting Quenched published, she talks about attending this same writer’s intensive in Switzerland. She shares how Mary was the one who told Jessica that the message in Quenched needed a platform, then eventually she became Jessica’s literary agent and helped her find that platform.

 

And I (and many other women) am so, so glad she did.

 

Jessica ends her blog with this statement: If you ever have a chance to join [Mary DeMuth] in Switzerland, do it.

 

Well…I’m doing it.

This is Mary!

So you’ve probably figured out by now that I plan on sharing this book with more than one person.

 

For a long time, when my friends who knew about the book asked what I was going to do with it, my answer was I don’t know. When a couple of them asked if I was thinking about publishing it, my answer was the same.

 

(Externally. Internally, it was more like “no way in *the word that Christians aren’t supposed to say unless they’re quoting the Bible*”)

 

But then I began sharing it. And that one person grew into two, then three, then a small circle, then a slightly bigger circle.

 

As more of my trusted friends responded to this book — which was really more of a journal entry gone rogue — in ways I could never have imagined, my answer slowly softened from a hard no to a not yet.

 

That’s where we are now, somewhere between not yet and

 

 

Here’s the thing.

 

I’m not going to Switzerland because I think that Mary DeMuth is going to become my literary agent, or because I think this trip is my ticket to getting a big publishing name behind my book.

 

If I’m honest, I’m still figuring out if that’s something I even want. I’m okay with going the self-publishing route and marketing myself on Instagram. I’m even okay, for now, with continuing to share my story via Google links. Maybe that is all it will ever be.

 

I’m going to Switzerland to attend a writing intensive led by Mary DeMuth because Mary believes in something called restorying. This is the idea that God takes the most wounded, ugly, shameful, broken parts of our stories — the parts we don’t want to look at ourselves — and He uses them to write something new.

 

Stories of hope. Of healing. Of freedom. Of grace.

 

Like a mosaic made from fragments of glass, Jesus takes the rubble of our stories and turns them into works of art. He did it with mine. I have a book to prove it. A book about a part of my story that I planned on taking with me to the grave where it belonged.

 

But the Author had other plans.

 

He restoried me.