on writing

musings from a year ago...

When I was the little girl sitting on the front porch, half hidden by the row of pink azalea bushes,  I had no halting self consciousness to keep me from writing.  Pencil, lined paper--poetry began to flow on the page.  Really bad poetry!  But there was that flow, that recognition, "I can do this, I am a writer!"  And that grew pretty steadily, thinking myself akin to jo march with her ink stained fingers.  There was enough confidence to push me through the end of highschool and into a communications degree.  But then somewhere in college, the self awareness sharpened, shifted, somewhere in the corner of a Barnes and Noble when I realized just how much written word was out there in the ocean of published work.  I very much felt the smallness of myself.  Did I really have any ideas that were new!  That were interesting!  And this was before all the self branding madness of blogging!  I would have been even more paralyzed had I been twice outshone by that sea of self publishing!

And so I stopped writing.  The bubble had burst and I felt like the part of me that seemed so unique was realized to be quite ordinary.

I've thought so much about that, the desire to stand out and excel in a certain area.  Does this come from an inner held belief that we each have our thing, our bent, our calling.

I had a text from a friend today, it was a video of shauna niequist, speaking of the importance of making room in life for one's passions and gifting. And as I listened to to her I felt a little bit of thaw in a place inside of me that has been frozen for years.  That whisper of that little girl, pushing that porch rocker with bare toes on cool concrete.  The girl who drank up the sunshine like water and played with words like toys and loved dirt under her nails.

The most motivating statement from shauna's video was that her mother knew that her son needed to see the picture of a woman alive in God and living joyfully, that her daughter needed to see what it is to be a Godly woman, living her full potential, living out her passions.  Oh how deeply I felt this.  That my children need to see joy in me!  That Shauna's mother lived for so long serving her family, taking care of them, giving of herself, but doing so without happiness.  But she started to reawaken and find that she delighted in giving aid to people in other countries, finding adventure and new expression.

Shauna said something about how women can giving indiscriminently of themselves.  That of course we are called to give, as Christ gave.  But that He didn't give all to everyone.  Am I proud in a way of the life lived all for my husband and children, does this give me a free pass of righteousness?  That I am the mother/martyr?  Is that God's plan for me?

I don't want to waste this season, or even to just wade through this season.  Although, the truth is that most of the time I am just trying to survive, and keep all those little tummies full!  But I have been doing so with clenched teeth, grinning and bearing it, slipping regularly into anger.

But I felt an awakening today, a new call to joy and a grand reason to pursue it.  How do I want my children to remember me?  How much would I love to be an inspiration for them, for my sons to seek women like me as wives, for my daughter to seek to be like me.  And I don't say this for pride sake, but that there would be no greater honor for me than for those that know me so intimately to see in me the joy of life in Christ, the fulfillment of living out one's design.