I attended a writing workshop on Saturday. It was somewhat of a last minute decision, although I had been contemplating it for weeks. Money was an issue, of course. But this week I had a bit of a revelation. While working on our annual budget at The Salvation Army, I realized that I wasn’t enjoying my work all that much. This might not seem like a big deal to anyone else, but to anyone who knows me well, they know that I have always enjoyed financial and number related tasks. My best friend, Jaime, would make fun of me in college for “saving” my accounting homework for my break from writing a paper. The truth is, I enjoy both numbers and words. Recently, through my graduate degree and my career, I have focused more on numbers. I realized this week that my interests are lying elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not ready to give up my addiction to numbers yet, they are in some bizarre way soothing and comfortable to me. But this desire to write that has been screaming inside of me, I feel, can’t be stifled any longer. At the very least, I feel that I need to give it a voice and see what it has to say. And so I went to the Women’s Writer’s Conference at Western Seminary and I am so thankful that I did.
The main theme throughout the whole conference was this- write because it’s a gift from God and for God. Do not write for the sole purpose of being successful and making lots of money and having lots of books, etc. The only way to deal with the ups and downs of a writer’s career is to write because you have to. Because you could never give it up and if you did you would cease to be you. I thanked God for that reminder. Because I’m not ready to pursue a writing career and I don’t know that that is what God has in store for me. Our main speaker resonated with my heart when she said, “You know, I’m not one of those people who are ok with failing. You know the type of people that if they fail at something the first time they try it again, and again, and again. That is not me! I know when I’m not good at something and I just don’t do it. I only do what I’m good at because I don’t like to fail.” That is my heart exactly. This has been a huge fear for me when thinking about writing. I don’t want to fail at it. I don’t want to be not good enough. But this weekend reminded me that writing isn’t to be the best, it’s just to be. I write because that’s who I am and that’s how I best communicate with myself and with God. Another slap-in-the-face revelation was that I haven’t been communicating best with God because I haven’t been writing. I haven’t been completely honest with myself because I haven’t been writing. Writing helps me to be me and that’s why I need to do it.
So I’m excited to recommit myself to be me and to make God a bigger priority in my life. I’m also realizing probably the biggest negative affect of living in a studio apartment is the lack of privacy. I don’t mind sharing space with Dustin, I like being close to him all the time. But it’s hard to “get away” for those critical and desperate times with God when you bare your soul in such a way that only God could understand or want to see. (For example, Dustin just turned on Seinfield and it’s so hard not to listen!! But I press on!) My prayer is that I’m able to find those times of utter abandonment in order to be painfully real. And even more to stop being lazy.
