Look Inside, Not Around

So, I've been having this dilemma.
Fact: I am a Christian.
I believe Jesus Christ was fully God and fully man, and that he was crucified in my place, and after three days, he rose again. This is true.

Fact: I write books. I haven't finished most of them, but I will. And I'm gonna go ahead and be confident in saying they're good. No. I mean, they're hella good.

Dilemma: Do I write Christian books or are my books just books?
This is a dilemma because I can go either way, but I want to do what God wants me to do. Let me explain.

So, until the beginning of this year, I'd never even considered writing books that weren't Christian, but I've been doing some thinking. There's the publishing issue, which is basically a Christian publishing company probably won't want a lots of swearing and suggestive content and that, but a secular publishing company won't want to throw Christianity at it's audience. So I either have to whitewash it or leave out all the super Jesusy bits. And then there's the God's Will issue. If they're not Christian, am I doing it right? If they're not, is that okay? As I've been struggling with this, I've never been so lost. I always knew what I was supposed to do, and suddenly I didn't.

Today, I decided, finally, but it took me a lot to get here. However, the point of this post is not to inform you of my problem being solved. It's actually about how not to solve the problem. During the course of this internal debate, I went to several of my most trusted friends, laid out my thinking on all of this, and asked them what to do. I wanted my friends to tell me in the plainest terms, "yes," or, "no."

Two problems with this:
1) This isn't a yes or no question.
2) It's my question. (Kind of like Frodo and the task of the ring of power. "Mine. My own.")
No one can carry it for me, or in this case, answer it. I'm it. At the end of the day, I'm the one who decides what goes in the book and what doesn't. And after a long battle, I've learned this.

No one can make my decisions for me. Even when I wish they would. Especially when I wish they would. Honestly, I love my independence, but in this particular case, I didn't want it. After a lovely lunch with my best friend today, I realized I was just as conflicted after talking about this as before, even though she had good and useful things to say. She's not the only one who had a good response to my dilemma, but it didn't matter how many people I talked to, I was still stuck. Because I didn't want to be the one with this responsibility. But I am.

And so,
No one can write my books for me, solve my problems for me, or live my life for me. And, no one can live your life for you.

(As for the solution to the dilemma, I'm just going to write the books until they're written. And that's that.)