Michael Phelps and Michael Phelps alone is the all-time gold medal winner. He, alone, had to swim fast, faster than anyone else, to win those medals. Then someone sent me a link to Mart De Haan’s article on his blog about how Phelps really didn’t achieve greatness all by himself.
I thought of how true this is when it comes to writing. A couple weeks ago I received my first advance copies of my novel, Kathryn’s Fountain. As you can see in the picture, I’m quite happy to hold a copy in my hand!
I wrote the novel, a solitary endeavor in the early morning hours last year. Then again, it wasn’t a solitary effort! My wife Diann has edited the manuscript as has Susan, 
our church’s secretary. Then Hannah, my editor at Cladach, did major editing on the manuscript. Catherine, my publisher, gave some additional input as well. Together, they’ve made my writing much better than it really is! I also think of someone way back 25 years ago, Marilyn Chinnis, a member of my church, who typed an entire book manuscript for me, a manuscript that never was published. What an encouragement she was by her belief in me that she expressed by many hours of work typing my dream!
No, I have not written my novel all by myself and Michael Phelps didn’t win all those gold medals all by himself. None of us really do much of anything of value all by ourselves. We need each other. Only when we are humble enough to ask for help and to admit we’ve been helped, and only when we are compassionate enough to offer help and committed enough to follow through with the help do we do great things for God!
Dave
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