The Painful Insignificance, Chocolate Cake and A Bottle of Wine …

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Adoptee, Art, Author, Being Real, Challenge, Choices, Christian Living

You’ve had days like that. Days when for whatever reason, and it doesn’t matter why, you misjudge, miscalculate, miss the mark, make a snap decision and just do something utterly stupid. But then it’s done and it can’t be undone and so you pray and hope that one day, a week from now or a month or a year or two, it just won’t matter. But today, right then, right now…

Chocolate cake and a bottle of wine.

For a migraine sufferer like me, this is a lethal combination. But I have mastered the art of smiling through the pain. I’ve had years to practice and I do it well. Ask me how I am. Fine. Smile. And you carry on, satisfied. Or maybe you don’t because you know … somehow … you see … somehow … and so you sit and stay awhile.

Chocolate cake and a bottle of wine.

I blame her really, not that I remember the event, I was only days old, but I do know that she left and never looked back. I know now she had her reasons. And she did leave me with one final parting gift. That feeling of complete and utter insignificance. The gift that keeps on giving. But it all turned out so well in the end. And maybe it’s not fair to lay blame at anybody’s feet. Maybe it isn’t fair to expect anybody to ever fully understand or even pretend to and maybe it isn’t fair to hope to matter just a bit when you know or think or suspect that at the end of the day, what you do doesn’t. Maybe it isn’t fair. Because it’s up to me, really. It’s my choice. I can choose to stay in the shadows where it’s safe or I can come out and play. Playgrounds were never my happy place. Shadows suit me better some days.

Chocolate cake and a bottle of wine.

We had this discussion some time ago, some friends and I, of how we’re all vulnerable. I said I didn’t like being vulnerable. I meant it. I accept that I am, but I don’t have to like it. You know? What possesses me to share on such levels? What am I looking for? What are any of us looking for? Friendship. Affirmation. Praise. Acceptance. I don’t know. Seriously. At what point would I sit back and sigh and smile content in knowing I am perfect in all my imperfections? At what point would I know, believe, that I was and am and will be truly loved? What kind of faith and courage does that take?

Once upon a time I tried to be a good little evangelical. I remember talking to a friend about Jesus and she said, “How in the world could anyone ever love me like that? Why would they want to?” And I sat back silent.

I’m told it’s true. I’m told the pat answer time and time again, he just does. I’ve said it. Believed it? Maybe in my own way. But when you grow up avoiding looking in the mirror because you don’t like what you see, that kind of faith takes forever to stick. A lifetime maybe.

So vulnerable, yeah, you got it. I am. Because we all are on some level. We all have our own stories, and some of us are too terrified to tell them. And so we write. I write about the real stuff of life because I do believe it matters. I believe some of us want and need to hear those stories and learn and grow because of them. So I write it all down. And I’ll share my crap with you, not to ask you to carry it, but to let you know that I’m just as messed up as the next person and maybe you are too. Maybe we can be messed up together. So I’ll write the thing down and I don’t know where it’ll end up. And maybe that’s okay. Because I know now. Publishers publish books to sell them, I’m not sure they much care about the content. And readers require a formula and you’d better stick to it if you want to win them over and don’t for goodness sake’s, don’t ever, ever, ever throw in one wrong unacceptable word. No soup for you.

Right now I feel a little like I’m on a teeter-totter that bangs on either side of courage and crazy. Because you’ve got to have a hefty dose of both to make it out there. You’ve got to acknowledge the things that hurt, the things that keep you up nights … you’ve got to know that one day, one day, one day, this will matter. The words you write today will matter. And even if they only matter to you … you’ll learn to live with that. And you’ll be okay. We will all be okay.

But for now? For today?

You can pray, and choose to live the thing out. And do it well. As best you can.

With chocolate cake and a bottle of wine.

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So Sometimes We Get Stuck …

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Art, Author, Being Real, Believe, Choices, Confidence

Ever been stuck? Like really stuck. Like, there is no way I’m getting out of this alive, stuck?

Stuck, like tires spinning. No way out.

Stuck, middle of the night in a silent house, staring into darkness, mind spinning. No way out.

If you’re not there now, you will be. Or you have been. We all get stuck eventually.

It comes in various forms, this being stuck. Physically, Emotionally, Spiritually.

Sometimes it’s a slow climb, one little event piles upon another and then another and the cynicism creeps in and the walls go up and you’re safe and completely protected in the cold and drafty castle you’ve built around yourself.

It’s okay there. You can be alone. Nobody visits anymore. But sometimes unwanted guests show up. You want to pull up the ramparts and refuse them entry, yet you nod and move aside and let the baggage through.

Doubt and Fear. They’re old friends. They know where their rooms are and they unpack quickly. You don’t have to wait on them. They help themselves. Sometimes Insecurity shows up too and they have a real party. Because he’s heaps of fun. And so you sit there, watching, watching as they eat away all your stores, drink up every last bit of determination you’ve saved to use for such a time, and you sit and listen as they talk about all the losers in the world and isn’t it a shame they just can’t get a break because they never will you know. And you, yeah, you know where you fit, right there with them, those silly fools they’re talking about who actually thought … that they were good … and soon discovered otherwise. You watch and you listen and you take it all in and try to ignore that hard knot in your stomach that tells you all you have to do is get up and leave the room. You don’t have to be here.

But … you’re stuck.

So you stay.

Time ticks on and yet you stay.

And wonder how you got all the way back here.

Stuck, again.

Sometimes all it takes is one careless word. One look. One glance at a person who overstepped and went where they shouldn’t have and you just cannot even stand the sight … and bam. Sometimes all it takes is that one memory. A longing. And a realization that things can never be exactly how we want them. And forgiveness? It’s the hardest thing in the world.

Stuck.

We think it easy to compartmentalize. To put things into categories, separate and distinct. Yet everything lumps together in the end. If you’ve any feeling at all, each part of your life will eventually bleed into the next. And you’ll look at that mess of melding colors on the paper and you’ll say it doesn’t matter because the painting was never going to be any good anyway. And so you rip it away. Say you’ll start over.

Blank Space.

Stuck.

Whether it’s a painting or a screen bereft of words or a soul stuck in muck so thick and so deep it seems impossible to escape – here’s the thing – it doesn’t have to be this way.

Ask me how I know.

Remember that time you visited a friend and you talked and talked and talked and then she said something so utterly ridiculously funny and before you knew it, there was laughter … laughter fills a room, fills a soul and starts to mend the broken. You need that.

Remember that time someone reached out and grabbed your hand and just held on? Maybe they prayed and oh, you didn’t want them to because you knew that was it right there, your breaking point … but you needed to be broken. You needed to let the healing begin. So let it happen already.

And remember … oh, remember that time you did that really good thing? That hard thing that took years to accomplish, years of battling it out, fighting for it and believing in it when people said you should just give up … but you did it anyway. You did it and it’s yours and … It. Was. Good. Damn good. And it’s okay to know that.

Remember …

You can do it again. 

If you want to.

It won’t always be this way.

So when I’m stuck, and I so often am, I reach back and hold fast to the memories of when things were good. When I got up and did the work and loved it. When I didn’t question whether I could or not, I just did. I reach back to the time … maybe not so long ago … when I actually believed in myself. Do I want that again?

Like you wouldn’t believe.

So sometimes getting unstuck takes work. Sometimes it is a reaching back, a prying open, a painful examination of what went wrong and why and was it really fixable and you just didn’t try … sometimes you need to go back to move forward. Not always, but sometimes. And sometimes you don’t. Sometimes all you really have to do … and here’s the part where you can grin and maybe laugh a little because it is actually that simple … sometimes all you really have to do is move on. 

Maybe, all you really have to do, when Doubt and Fear and Insecurity throw a party and insist you sit there and listen to every awful word … maybe all you really have to do is get up. Get up and leave the room.

And slam the door on the way out.

Make Your Art – And Be Satisfied…

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Art, Creating, Faith, Life, Love, Satisfaction, Writing Life

The weeks are running away from me. Summer is almost over and I’m out of breath. Not because of all I’ve done, I suppose, but more because of what I’ve learned. What I’m still learning. What I’m trying desperately to get a handle on and hold fast to.

This being still. This knowing.

This trusting.

This making of art and simply letting it be… It’s not an easy concept for me. For someone who has spent the last 2o or so years in constant ‘do’ mode – do read these 50 books on craft, do attend these conferences, do take this online course, do learn how to write a synopsis without the snore factor….don’t get me wrong, the doing is part of the becoming, but sometimes it overtakes us and shapes us into something we are not.

Doing it right, getting it right…that can muscle in and really get in the way of just letting it be right. 

Let your art be yours.

Don’t lose the beauty in what you’ve created. Don’t lose sight of where it came from in the fist place. This gift you have…it is not one to be taken lightly.

These things I’ve been pondering over the course of this summer. A while back, a friend asked why I wanted to be published, why it seemed so important to me. I gave a long answer that made sense to me at the time. But now I’m not so sure. Other friends weighed in. You know if you’re freaked out now, just with stuff on submission… You don’t seem to handle stress well… There’s a lot of pressure in publishing… And so on.

Yes. I agree. They’re right.

Truthfully, I don’t know where I fit in the grand scheme of man’s plan. And perhaps it is enough to write these books and let them sit. Share them with a few who will appreciate the words. Yet this trips me up. Every time. It’s not enough, even though it should be. But I’m trying to put that aside. Because I can’t control it. All I can do is be obedient to the call I hear, and let the words flow. Create the art and know that it is good.

Like a song that settles deep within the heart and stays. Years later, you still know the words and the tune and the emotions wrapped up deep in that mournful melody. Maybe it was never written for you, but it has become yours. Nobody can take that from you.

I’ve just finished writing another book. I’m immensely satisfied with it. I’ve let a few people read it, mainly for feedback and because I still do have this intrinsic need to share what I do. Perhaps it is because I like giving gifts. I like to share. While I’m not terribly good at outward displays of affection, I have other ways of showing love. Sharing life. I’m beginning to see that this art, this writing down the words and letting them settle deep, this is who I am. This is how I give of myself.

And I have to let it be enough.

This story I’ve just finished? It’s not what I expected. And I don’t know where it will go. I will ‘do’ the right things with it. I will send it off into the great beyond and pray that perhaps it was for a purpose. But more than this, I will be satisfied in what I have created. This one, I think, was for me. There were lessons there I needed to learn. And I am grateful to have found the words. Or perhaps to have been given them.

I am grateful for this gift. This art.

And for now, for today, in this moment,  I will be satisfied in the silence of it.

Storytellers – Will You Count The Cost?

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Art, Counting the Cost, Hope, Writing, Writing Life

Stories. We all have them. I like to believe that when we’re born, God takes a leather-bound book full with blank pages, and writes our name on the front of it. And then he sits back and waits…and watches.

Watches to see what we will do with the stories we are given.

I’ve kept journals over the years. It sort of became an obsession of mine. I’d write everything down. The good, the bad, the ugly and the really hideously ugly. Then I became obsessed with reading them. Going back over every detail of my past, reliving it, cringing and wishing I could do a lot of it over.

It cost me. Not only to write down those words that sometimes conveyed dark days, but to read them back to myself. Because each time I did, I served up another side of guilt and forced myself to swallow it. Eventually I found some healing and I found the courage to get rid of those books. I didn’t need them anymore. But the stories remained.

The past is always there, lurking, waiting for the moment I stumble and fall and lose my way and then it looms large, steps from the shadows and laughs at my pitiful attempts to be a better person than I was yesterday. Or the day before. And it tries to tell me that tomorrow won’t be any better.

I have tried and I have failed and I have tried again. For someone with rejection issues, choosing to forge a career in the publishing business is slightly masochistic, I admit. I know people think I’m nuts. They don’t get it. A couple of books does not a career make, and an unknown future is questionable at best. I get it. But what they maybe fail to understand, is that for me, this matter of story, this art of forming words, fitting them together until they find their perfect place, this is not some fanciful time wasting practice. This is me breathing, taking hold of life for everything it’s worth, and choosing to speak up, speak out. This is me choosing to tell my story.

We’re all given a voice, and we’re all given a choice. How will we use what we’ve been given? Some will sing out, some will play, fingers flying over ivory keys as though their life depended on the very next note they touch. Others pick up paints and brushes and get lost in colors and depth of perspective, bleeding life into art. Still others sit for hours on end, tap tap tapping at black squares until the right words come. And even when they do, we don’t know that they are true. They must be tested, tried and tangled with over and over and over. And it’s hard. It hurts. When you choose to plumb the depths of your own soul, more often than not, you come up wanting.

Yet we are compelled to tell our stories. We count the cost of that choice. A nod toward sanity as it flies by in a fleeting farewell as we pick up our instruments again, reach for that brush, stare at that blinking cursor and wonder…where will it all end?

We don’t know and part of us doesn’t care, not really, because we are in the here and now, and we are speaking. We are telling our stories as best we can and it matters not where they land. Because we have released them, given them as our gift. We have paid the price every time, but it is worth it because even as we doubt and question and sometimes grab back what we give, we know we can’t not do this. This is life. Breath. Hope. Grace.

And, if we ask for it, peace.