Yes, my insta feed, twitter feed & FB feed was all abuzz from my time at the . At the Festival of Faith & Writers, I was entirely inspired, convicted, guilt-ridden to begin writing consistently again.
Let’s just keep it real, y’all: 75% of the reason I went to FFW was Annie Lamott. That, driving distance & blogging peeps!
And, true to form, she IMPACTED me.
I met & leaned on Annie’s leg. O Magnify, Lord Jesus. I asked her to sign my boob, but she didn’t have a Sharpie. =)
“With all of what we waste our time on every day, if you can’t find an hour to write, not even Jesus can help you,” she says.
“Write through the abyss. And if you can’t make it across the abyss, go to Ikea & buy an area run. And then write,” she says.
I can blow through 15 minutes at a time on Facebook, several times a day. SIGH. I need to begin capturing those moments no matter what it is: a prayer journal to the Lord, a 10 minute honesty session with myself, a 5 minute blog post, 0r 10 minutes on my book proposal. I have the time. I have the time.
Loosely connected is that I *gasp* often wait for inspiration to hit.
“Don’t wait for inspiration to hit,” Annie says. “Inspiration has not been much use to me over the years,” she says. “You just sit down & you do it. Every day.”
When life is exorbitantly hard, I’m not as inspired and I write & I read less often. As a result, I am inspired less often. Life has been exorbitantly hard for 6 months. At least. I’ve written so much less.
“The hour before the world gets to you in the morning is a precious and sacred hour. If there’s a way to claim that, do.”
Here are the problems with me not-writing-when-I-should-be:
1. Writing helps me figure out life, to make sense of the evil and the beautiful. Writing -whether publicly or privately- is a (mostly) relaxing hobby that brings a lot of joy and peace. Writing gives me something constructive and life-giving to do when I’m feeling anxious & depressed.
2. Writing publicly gives me an outlet to serve others when I’m feeling nothing but selfishly narcissistic.
In these ways, writing has been a tool in my tool belt towards greater healing for myself and others.
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Something really beautiful happened at the Festival of Faith & Writers.
In a seminar on The Issues Facing Writers of Color, a woman stated that my blog had meant all the things to her & then others began to agree. For a moment, I blushed & teared up –mostly because she was tearing up explaining how meaningful it is to find an honest voice-of-a-minority-woman on the interwebs.
It’s humbling y’all. On the one hand, I want to keep re-iterating what a screw-up I am so no one will think I’ve tried to trick them. On the other hand, I want to be a servant to my readers and say all the things you need me to say…even while I struggle myself. I feel this tension almost constantly.
There’s times I’ve fully believed & owned the voice that some tell me I have. I’ve written through the pain & I’ve allowed others into my world. There’s times I want to shut it all down, Netflix binge & weep for days. And then there’s times like this, when more than a few encourage me to Just Keep Writing and I choose to believe, I’m still an A-O-K person to do it. You lovely readers & a few good friends have gone out of your way to REALLY -LIKE REALLY- ENCOURAGE that God is in fact calling me to use my gifts to serve the body of Christ.
My good friends know my dirt, my gunk, my tomfoolery & have still said, “yes, blog! Yes, finish your memoir! Yes, write the Bible studies for Converge! Yes, use your gifts! Yes, write through the abyss! Yes! Yes! Yes!
So. Here I go. I am facing an abyss. I’m going to write through it. And I might just run to Ikea to buy an area rug too.
Also, on my Facebook page yesterday on Holy Week.
Day 1. Check.
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