Purposeful again

Wow, it has been a while.

And would you believe that for the first time, my negligence toward this blog has stemmed from the very welcome problem of actually writing a lot of things? 

Indeed, your disbelief doesn’t even offend me, given the number of times I have left my creative juices to rot in my mother’s 1930s cellar, along with all the corn she canned just before the Dust Bowl. But it is true, my friends, and I will show you how this has come to be.

Rewind to a few months ago, when I was in one of my trademark slumps, every morning leaving for work, where there was nigh on nothing to do for several hours a day–because I work in an office in a remote corner of a school, where one loses all concept of time.

What was it that Gollum said?

“And we forgot the taste of bread, the sound of trees, the softness of the wind… We even forgot our own name.”

Did you read that in your best Gollum voice? Please tell me you did.

But I digress.

I was becoming idle in my cave, the countless hours not graced by students taken up with mindless scrolling, and streaming, and daydreaming about finally going home to my cat and my husband.

I complained of this to said husband (a new acquisition as of August 4th, 2019; congratulate me!), saying how I wished I were doing something productive, creative.

For a long time now I’ve felt the need to write, but my lack of direction always stopped me. If God wanted me to write, surely he’d provide some revelation of the story he wanted me to tell, dictate its particulars to me and show me exactly where to send it.

My husband, upon hearing my woes, said something profound: “well, if you want to do it, why don’t you do it?”

I won’t patronize you. I’ve heard that same sentence before, from many a source. But I saw those words in a different light that day. I realized that all along I had been waiting, hoping, searching for the right project, the one God had intended for me, and I thought by just sitting and listening it would somehow find me.

What I missed in all of that was this: following God’s plan for my life has never been an all-inclusive getaway–it’s been a bunch of steps of faith across a bridge I can’t see, to get to a destination I think I can imagine, but have no idea what it actually looks like. (any Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade fans here?)

So I decided to take that first step, and just write. Write whatever I wanted to–which, incidentally, turned out to be a book I’d started in high school. Because clearly, regardless of any specifics, God was telling me to write–and I imagine, when it’s important for me to know (likely after He’s done something awesome), he’ll fill me in on the details.

And it gives me joy, right now, to be doing that which I feel called to do, even if no one reads it–because God is my first reader, and that will always be true, no matter how many souls my words may reach.

Don’t you know we’re here to do things, no matter where it gets us? And not for ourselves, but for the God who made us so determined, so imaginative, so hopeful, so very close to His own image and so desirous to be near His heart.

What are you not doing? What passion, what creative impulse, what gift have you been given that you’re saving for the “right time”? Now is the right time. Sing as you wash the dishes, write your songs and play them to the sky, build and craft and create and cook. Teach and learn and run. Play games. And for God’s sake, write. 

 

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them… Everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said:

‘Wake up, sleeper,
    rise from the dead,
    and Christ will shine on you.’”

-Ephesians 5:8-11, 13-14