Protect me from the praise I receive

During our weekend stay at an extravagant Austin, Texas, hotel, my husband and I felt like masqueraders in the den of the wealthy. Jonathan had come for a writer’s conference and I tagged along, spending most of my time working in front of the huge, octagonal fish tank that reposed on a dais in the lobby.

The tank had maybe a hundred fish in it: yellow ones, blue-striped ones, white-and-black-spotted ones, etc. etc. They swam in and out of stumps, weeds, and curly plants. I took especial notice of the biggest fish in the tank, a yellow-purple-pink one with a long wavy dorsal fin and eyes as unblinking as buttons. Its lips parted in a way that reminded me of a smile.

One evening I took my familiar seat beside the fish tank. That night the hotel was a madhouse with YMCA children running through the lobby, up the stairways, and through the open balconies. One of them pulled the fire alarm on the fourth floor, setting the building in a panic. Within the same five minutes, a fish in the tank died and the large, button-eyed bully fish began to eat it. Children instinctively gathered around the tank to watch, horrified. “It’s eating its own kind!” one child cried.

The fish, even without these acts of violence, seemed magnetic to the hotel visitors, a group that weekend consisting mainly of writers—amateur and professional—and YMCA children who had come to the hotel for some kind of competition. Between conference sessions the writers would wander toward the dais and strike up conversations with me. It was easy because the conversations always followed a format: “Fiction or non?” “Children or adults?” “Instructional, inspirational, or technical?” It was exciting, and a little seedy, because underneath the conversations lay a palpable sense that the participants hoped for a connection to hoist them higher up the rickety ladder toward publication. It made sense. So much of breaking into the writing business these days seems to revolve around self-promotion. How many followers can you secure? How many books can you peddle? Bookstores can demoralize writers in a glance. With so many others vying for space, how can you get a publisher to notice you? Like the fish, you hide carnivorous ambitions behind your pretty colors and your smile.

One woman who sat down beside me asked directly about this dilemma. “As a Christian,” she said, “how do you handle the self-promotion required of the writer?”

Surprised by the question, I sputtered forth a firm resolve I have nursed for a long time. “I ask God to protect me from the praise I receive,” I said. “I don’t know what else to do.”

I am still thinking about her question. Scripture flashes across my mind: “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth.” And another: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” I am deeply competitive and prone to envy. So I add an addendum to my prayer: “Help me not to eat my own kind.”