Just Write

It feels like there is a large wad of immovable Play-Doh in my head. I'm sure that one line alone will provide some unending ammunition for certain grown men in my life. Maybe it's an aneurism. Maybe I'll be seeing Glory before I know it. Probably it's just my bodies protection against going totally insane through the hard process of grief. Nothing more glamorous than the Alzheimer's symptoms that I've read about that happen after a traumatic accident. Either way, its there. Interrupting any inspiration, forcing my brain to trek around it to simply finish a complete thought, making me forget words and rendering myself an incompetent fool most times when I open my mouth. Words keep chasing each other around, but the connection gets lost. And then the tears start. Either because of the lost words or simply because the realities of them are too powerful to try to comprehend.

Writing is easier.

That handy little gadget on my Libre Office program even makes helpful word suggestions once in a while when my brain gets stuck. Staring at a blinking curser allows more time to put thoughts together than standing before a live human body who is waiting for you to speak. But I even quit writing a while ago. That mother guilt kicked in and I thought I would do everybody more justice to not sit at the computer and write so much, so I stopped. And instead, just sat and stared at the computer for several months. Very therapeutic. I figured I was being a better mother to not be so selfish. But, after forty years, it finally dawned on me that I am a writer. I write. It's what I do. My father was a talker. My mother is a talker. My sister is a talker. I write. I always have. Duh. So I've made a commitment to myself to write. Ignore the laundry, wake up early or stay up late, whatever it takes. Make another pot of coffee and write.

I have two books in the works. One a fun book for the family about our time here on the farm and the other a first hand experience devotional that goes deeper into the theology of God and suffering than I should be qualified to write, but is instead a truth that I am learning the hard way. They accuse me, too, those two half done books. Defeat rules some days telling me to find something better to do. Writing is wasting time. Sitting in a chair is wasting time. Other days the writing just plain scares me. Both for the typos involved and the truth that comes through. I wonder sometimes what it is that I am really scared of. Being known? Being real? Or having to be known and having to be real.

Writing takes me to real.

When I write that blob in my head smooths out and I can make sense of thoughts. I can see the end. I can remember eternity and the God who holds it in His hands. Even this moment. Even the tears. Even a son who is no longer here. The insane is not so insane through written words. So I will attempt to write everyday: a grocery list, a Menards list, a blog post, a note to my children, a love letter to my husband, a love letter to my God. Then I'll throw in a load of laundry. The minor stuff can wait.