Beginning, Again

I find myself here, in the quiet, with chores done, a sleeping dog and baby on either side of me, and nothing else to distract me or to hide behind. I leave my phone on the counter, and I accept this time as a gift. Bare, I bring my words—here I invite them to have breath. It seems new, writing, and yet, it is a return to a chapter in my life I have in some ways, already lived.

I used to write, every morning I would waken brimming with ideas and equal parts of whimsy and terror that coexist as a nearly twenty-something trying to get a grasp on what life actually, is. 

But that was when I was in college. 

That was when I was tied to reality by a shoestring. The things I wrote then were prayers sent out like shrapnel to Heaven. I feel like I have come so far sometimes, and I must be honest, my words here are just a different caliber of shrapnel, but shrapnel all the same. I like to think that I have blossomed like a flower, or birthed anew as a butterfly from her cocoon, but then again, aren't we all always becoming new? I didn't think so, but the more I live I realize it is not a season of life, but rather, a constant of it. 

Of course, there are seasons when we are growing at a more rapid rate, or maybe the change is coming about and so we realize it all the more. And then there are seasons where we are resisting the change. I have had many of both thus far, and I suspect you have too.

Why do I say all this? This wasn't even what I planned to come here to say—I think it is perhaps that I am trying to provide you, or me rather, with an introduction of sorts to what this attempt at writing is to be. A reflection on seasons past while living forward? A memoir I suppose? Sometimes I look forward to being a grandmother to depart the wisdom I have gleaned from my life onto younger generations, but let's not rush this as I've arrived at my age in quick enough time as it is. So is that what this intends to become, a log of learned wisdom for anyone who will read it—or maybe, for myself to look back on?

I think maybe the purpose is all of those things, and also something more.

The more, is, that there is something I feel myself trying to become. Not like the kind of trying when you're young, and you want to become what the crowd has decided, or to gain a certain kind of identity or reputation, but more like an organic growing—here it is, the flower and caterpillar metaphor that I love and hate because it is both so fitting and yet so common, maybe common because it is so fitting, and maybe that is just fine. What ever this thing may be, it is happening, rapidly, and I feel in my belly that I must keep up with it or keep track of it because it is important, and maybe, it is the thing that is the point of living after all. 

And, I also think I am ready to make art. 

I cry as I write this because it has been such a long time that I have, oh my maybe it has been forever thus far for me, been too afraid to make art. I claim to be an artist but feel, perpetually, like an imposter. And I am tired of saying that. I am tired of trying to fit into the mold I have never fit into. Now, I look at my baby and never want him to feel that or another way that holds him back from living the life God has invited him to live, and I am challenged. Challenged to finally move on, to not be afraid, to be afraid and go forth anyway, to be bad before getting possibly better, to maybe not get better but to still create, because maybe that is just fine. Maybe a joyful noise is all it will be but maybe that is actually enough. A life that makes a noise is better than a life that makes nothing. 

And I am tired, tired of traveling through this life as Jonah in the belly of the whale. I am ready to go to Ninevah on my own two feet, and do what God is asking. I feel like God has given me words, story, colors, compassion, exclamation points and commas, and my life feels like a rainbow, a sea storm, and a collage and I am ready to stop marketing myself—I was never good at that anyway—and I am not only ready, but everything within me is preparing to show up with all that I am hopeful for where I am going. And this is the part I feel compelled to keep an eye on, it feels beautiful and I don't want to miss a moment of it. I will, and that's okay, but I am being led into this, to observe it and to share it. 

Maybe I am my own audience? I am certainly my own wilderness, so that is just fine too.