Not Achieving My Potential

At one point I was releasing three or four books a year. Now I haven't had a new release since 2022, and I've learned that life isn't measured by success, unless you define success as faithfulness.

Photo by Jem Sahagun on Unsplash

I listened to a gut wrenching interview this week with Donn King, a nonfiction author who is a caregiver for his twenty-two-year-old daughter with an extremely rare health condition that demands his constant attention. He’s released a book for creative caregivers recently titled Creating While Caring: Practical Tips to Keep Creating While Caring for a Loved One.

“I’ve had to get okay with not achieving my potential,” he said in the interview, referring to his author career.

The podcast interviewer, Joanna Penn, astutely made this remark in response: “It’s so hard because, of course, you have reached your potential as a caring father and husband, but that’s not measured by a level of success that anyone could see.”

As someone who has been in caregiver mode multiple times, spanning quite a few years, I’ve seen my own production as an author slow to a crawl, especially recently. I’ve been able to reissue a couple of books over the last few years, but I haven’t had a new release since 2022. In fact, I left my readers hanging with the Cricket Springs Series after releasing the first book in that series three years ago without being able to release book two since then (book two is close to being done, but I’m not able to offer any more guesses about its release).

And that’s okay. In fact, caregiving is my calling for now. My income mostly comes from editing and writing work-for-hire books for publishers.

Life isn’t measured by our success, unless you define success as faithfulness. I’d much rather my obituary refer to my faithfulness as a caregiver than to any achievement in my author career.

Caregiving will never show up on a bestseller list, but it will help my mother maintain her dignity. It’ll help her feel loved and respected, and hopefully, like she has inherent worth, not because of what she can or cannot contribute, or does or does not do, but because she’s an image bearer of God.

I think about the apostle Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:18 (NIV): “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” The books I author are seen. The care I provide is largely unseen. One will presumably gather dust on bookshelves. The other? I’m not sure we will fully understand its weight this side of eternity.

This doesn’t mean creative work doesn’t matter though. It does. But I suspect my most important work won’t be found on Amazon. Instead, I think it’s being written in a series of ordinary days, quiet choices and the decision to show up when no one can applaud.