My family and I had a great time up at Hume Lake last week. Our kids went to day camp for a few hours each day, which means I had some free time to write while sitting by a beautiful lake. It was dreamy.

One day as we were talking to a friend that lives up there, Trav casually mentioned I’d been writing that morning. My friend turned to me and asked me what I was writing about. Cue the awkward pause and then me stuttering something about trying to write a book. Then he kindly asked what the book was about, and I fumbled my way through another answer. Trav jumped in and explained the book better than I did. Bless him. It made me realize it was time for me to stop being embarrassed about attempting to write a book. And I needed to pick a title and write a pitch so I can talk about the thing with some clarity.

So, I spent a lot of time last week organizing all of my random notes and very, very rough drafts of possible chapters. I now have a less-rough-but-still-in-process table of contents and… a title! Well, a working title anyhow. I’m told that these things change often throughout the book process. I’ve had a long list of options for quite some time at this point, but it was time to narrow it down and pick one. Now if someone asks me what I’m writing I’d say…

I’m writing a book called Decide to Date: a prayerful and practical approach to getting married. It will show women how and why they can make proactive dating decisions and be intentional about their desire to get married.

Decide to Date will have three main sections- the why behind getting intentional with your dating life, the how/lots of practical principles, and then my story laid out much like when I blogged it all here.

There. I said the title out loud on the internet. Now of course I want to crawl into a hole, but I’ll try to ignore that instinct. Like I mentioned previously, this all reminds me of when I was getting used to admitting that I wanted to get married. In my early days of getting more proactive, I was having a conversation with a friend about all the dating things and at one point I just flat out asked her if she’d like to be married someday. There was a long pause… and then she said yes, she would. We both laughed at how simple and yet vulnerable it felt to admit it. It was like we were at some sort of Daters Anonymous meeting. “Hi, my name is Laura, and I’d like to get married.” It was funny, but as it turned out, also an important step toward actually finding a husband.

Here’s to saying things out loud with clarity! Do you have any desires you need to admit and own? Feel free to fill in the blanks and leave a comment like, “Hi, I’m _____ and I’d like to _____.” Or if a public comment is a little too well, public for you, shoot me an email or talk to the Lord about it. He hears you! And he doesn’t think your hopes are silly. I’m reminding myself of that often in this process.