By: Rebecca Miller
Cornered in Shallow Water: One Man’s Journey from Crippling Fear to Freedom and Faith, authored by Steve Wilmot of Edgerton, will “hit the shelves”…well, actually will hit the digital world this coming Sunday, April 5, 2020.
Wilmot’s short description of the book is that it is, “A story about overcoming the fear of diving into deep water when you don’t know how to swim. It’s told and felt through the life of Gabriel Williams, a pastor who knows exactly what to do about a life-changing decision that he knows he must make, but is afraid to take the leap. It’s about leaving the safety of the shallow end and taking risks that God wants you to take. It’s about stepping out of your comfort zone, about being afraid but doing the thing you’re afraid of anyway.”
The book is totally fictional but has characters that are a lot like some real people and has a number of situations based on occurrences in his life, so much so that he is concerned that people who know him will think it is a true retelling of someone’s life.
That is not the case, he stressed in an interview. “A friend of mine, who previewed the book for me, picked up on one of the characters being very much like my wife and called to say he never knew my wife had cancer! Well, my wife didn’t ever have cancer and I explained that to him. The character is somewhat based on my wife but is still a fictional character.”
So a fair warning to those who may know Steve personally, don’t read more into the story than is there, per his request. Wilmot began to love writing while in Garret High School, in his hometown of Garret, Indiana. He was the editor of the high school newspaper until his graduation in 1971.
He and his wife Becki were married in June of 1974 while he was a student at Great Lakes Bible College. He graduated in 1975, with a Bachelor of Religious Education, and wrote Sunday School and Bible Study curriculum for churches off and on over the years. His desire, in the 70’s, was to pastor and so he began looking for a church to serve and ended up in Payne, Ohio.
From there he pastored in Napoleon and then in Edinburgh, Indiana outside Indianapolis, before coming to pastor the Edgerton Church of Christ for five years. “We ended up starting Edgerton Christian Church with twenty or thirty other people and were there for 23 years,” Wilmot shared.
During those years he was also a Mail Carrier for the U.S. Post Office, retiring in 2017, and he spent a few years as the owner/editor of the Edgerton Earth Newspaper. He loved the freedom he had while writing for the paper, even starting two columns called “Pastor’s Ponderings” and “How I see It.”
He got to write about whatever interested him and somewhere around 2012 was when the thought that he might want to write a book surfaced. Becki encouraged him and he began. It got laid aside at one point due to some insecurities he had, but when his friend and encourager Stacy Carlin passed away he felt a surging desire to finish the book to honor her.
“I have dedicated this book to my wife and to Stacy as they were the two biggest encouragers I had for this,” Wilmot said. Back around 2012, he started “sensing that God wanted me to do something other than pastoring,” he continued.
“I was afraid of making the break, but we closed down the church and all merged into what was LCRF (Life Changing Realities Fellowship) at the time, and is now LCC (Life Changing Church).”
During the past eight years he has been the Small Groups Pastor and an elder at LCC but recently retired so that he can focus on what he sees as his new calling from God, devoting his time to writing. Steve and Becki Wilmot have been part of Edgerton for the past twenty five years, raising their four children there.
They rejoice that three of their grown children are also right there in Edgerton and one is only about an hour away, allowing them plenty of time to love on their eight grandchildren. One of the grandsons carries the name of the main character in the book, Gabriel.
Concerning the process of getting his book published, Wilmot chose to “selfpublish”, doing all of his own editing and formatting before sending it to Amazon to go on sale. Starting on April 5, the book will be available as an e-book, totally free for the first two days and then only 99 cents for the next week.
From that point on it will cost $4.99 and he is hoping to have it available in paperback also very soon. “I loved the writing part,” Wilmot shared, “but formatting and publication is awful. I hated the rest of the stuff so I am thinking that in the future I might have someone else take care of that part.”
“At one point when I was feeling frustrated I read a comment by Mark Batterson, the author of The Circle Maker and Draw the Circle. He said that he doesn’t write to make money of to help other people so much as he is writing for his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren to know who he was and for what he stood.”
“That gave me such peace…that is why I am writing…so that my future generations will see who I am and what I stand for.”
Even as his first book is ready for publication, Steve Wilmot has the germs of eleven or twelve books stirring in his heart and mind and has already started writing two of them. So…Go to Amazon and type in his name, or the title of his book, and get started this Sunday, April 5, 2020 or anytime thereafter.
It is fascinating that the timing of the publication of this book, on overcoming fear and walking in faith, is right now in the midst of this 2020 virus shutdown, when fear is rampant and many have plenty of time to read a good book.
Rebecca can be reached at publisher@thevillagereporter.com