Tuesday, August 26, 2003

This is a momentous day, yet a day quite like any other.  I am finally sitting down to write.

I’ve spent the past year at the desk, writing checks, reading and printing off Internet news, dashing off e-mails, filling out forms…but nothing of writing.  Beginning with the purchase of the Blue Top townhouse last July, life began a full forward throttle of duties and errands that completely obliterated any plans to write.  Like Chicken Little, I rushed around preventing the “end of the world as we know it” by painting, meeting contractors, packing boxes, carrying boxes, arranging and rearranging boxes, moving, unpacking, washing, sorting, tossing, and giving…until there seemed little left to give.

One year later, brushing aside the dust that’s settled, it’s hard to tell if we have failed or succeeded.  We now own two townhouses that are successfully rented, we sold our huge Tempe home, we have renovated and moved into our smaller Vernon home, storing away furniture from only one bedroom and the living room.

In the process, I replaced and reprogrammed every chip of computer efficiency I had learned to count on.  We have traveled to North Carolina, Tennessee, Washington D.C., and Kansas City, and finally…we have ended the year’s storm with two weeks of peace at the cabin in Eagar.

I’m exhausted.

I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to write today.

I struggle to make sense of this past year, an endless interruption of my “calling” to write for God, a year that challenged my understanding of what God is calling me to do.  Do I write?  And then, if yes, then what?

On this first day back at the keyboard, it’s the little things that make me thankful and offer hope.  Thanks be to God that we have a home, and thanks be to God that both Vic and I are united in our gratitude that it is a small and cozy home.  Thanks that the water bill was paid each month, given the constant threat that the bill would drop by accident into some storage box and end up in the attic.  And so many thanks that each day Vic and I grow closer, sharing thoughts about how we want to spend life when it is no longer controlled by his full-time job.

I’ve got a schedule now.  At 10:00 a.m. each day, when Vic has finally left the house and all is quiet, I will write.  For two hours each day, I will put words on paper, even if they must be deleted tomorrow…but I will put words on the paper to form ideas, stringing together concepts and arguments, putting down memories, expressing anger, love, faith…and I will write.

We have taken back control of our first home, rented for the past ten years.  These next two years will be sufficient for us to finish rehabilitating its landscaping, painting, and structure.  We don’t have to do it all today.  Instead, Vic and I are able to agree on one simple job for the day, something that can be accomplished and still leave time for writing.  This morning we went through the blue suitcase I brought back from Kansas.  Giveaways, all of it, perfect for Hermalinda to take to her church and hand out, Vic put the suitcase in the van.  Then he turned and picked up a stack of wooden light switch plates removed during renovation…Vic pacing, demanding, “Where do these go?”

“Not today,” I told him.  “The suitcase was our job for the day, and we are finished. We can do those tomorrow.”  He agreed.  Amazing!  And with that, we preserved this little cocoon of writing time I’ve needed so badly.

In the wee hours this morning, I drafted papers and notes needed to sell our land in Tennessee.  To an outsider, it must look like writing.  But it’s not.  It’s business, paperwork, distraction.  I was in a race against the clock.  Ten o’clock was approaching, time to write, and the contract was still half done.  But God is on my side.  He gives me the calm to know the contract will wait.  It will have to, if I want to write.

Successes are building.  I’ve gone one week now without having a glass of wine, a bottle of beer.  Vic saved me once.  As I debated the wisdom of having “just one” glass of wine with our salmon dinner, he reminded me that one did not mean two.  Could I stay with one, he asked?  Four days later, walking by the liquor department in Bashas, I know I will have to work at this battle for a long time.  But it feels good to count seven days of success.

Yesterday, I began a fast of sorts.  I’m drinking liquids.  It is good to have this time to reinforce limits on myself.  I want to eat.  The tuna smells good.  And I sure could enjoy a slice of 12-grain bread.  But I don’t need to eat.  To want is not to need.

Little successes.  I’ve taken my vitamins every day without fail for one week.  No wine.  One day without food.  One home repair for the day…and only one.  Discipline builds confidence.  And finally, just on time, as planned for months now, at 10:00 a.m. I sit at the keyboard with two hours ahead given only to one thing.  I write.

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As I contemplate the hard won battle to preserve two hours each day for writing, I tackle the next war on the horizon.  What will I write?

Like the sight and smell of foods I want to eat, every writing project I conjure up seems enticing.  Being back in my journal is cozy like an old sweater.  And cozy is a sign more certain than any I know of that I must pull back and take a hard look at what this time at the keyboard means.

If not writing, I could use this time to mend wounds, share lunch with a lonely nursing home resident, listen to a child read, or push forward to finish painting the house three months ahead of schedule.  Writing is fun.  It’s leisure.  Expression.  Thinking.  Telling.  But most of all it’s responsibility.  I’m responsible for offering this time to God as my best effort.

Perhaps this means that the single most important discipline I’ve reinstated this week has been my morning prayer time.  God speaks only if we invite him in.  In despair, over the past year, bemoaning the interruptions of each day that prevented me from writing, I gave in to the notion that there wasn’t even time for God.

I made sure there wasn’t, avoiding my own responsibility for making the time to be available to Him.  How many hours did I waste playing computer games, telling myself I deserved this mindless rest to unwind from the pressures of the day?  God was waiting.

I’m glad to be sitting at His feet again, reading, learning, praying.  There is so much I feel I must be doing even as I come to Him.  Still…I’m so very certain now that the only way to move forward is to put myself behind…and follow.

 

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THE WRITER’S LIFE
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