Words from a Weary Writer

It has been a while since I felt like writing. Last night I laid on the hammock in the dark, listening to dishes being washed in the sink indoors, the light from the dining room splaying across the back yard. I squinted my eyes and tried to make the words come, but they didn't.

And I know what you're thinking right now: "but you still write so much, how can you even say the words aren't coming?" What I said is it's been a while since I felt like writing.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I used to dream of being a writer. When I was 11 years old, I clutched my copy of Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle and knew this was what I would do with my life, string words together beautifully. But any true writer will tell you writing is not about being published. To be published only is for narcissists and public relators. Writers must only write.

There are nebulous goals in front of me, always moving targets, "When this happens" or "When this does," then I will have arrived. But then I reach the nearest pinnacle and I find the finish line has moved back farther still. If it is to be noticed by respected writers and thinkers, I have arrived. If it is to be published in dream places, I have arrived. If it is to be offered a book deal, I have arrived. But nothing satisfies. Every writer who affirms me, I doubt. Every platform given me, I fear. Every offer of publishing, I second guess.

But what if it is only about the pilgrimage?

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My roommate comes into my room sometimes and crawls under my down comforter and we comfort one another with words like these: you're not finished yet, we haven't arrived, there's more for God to do in and through us, but sometimes? Sometimes we just need to slow down, be still, wait, and hear.

So I am in this place these days. I write and I write voraciously because it is expected of me and depended on from me, but the joy in it is missing these days. I do not feel like writing or saying or publishing or submitting. I feel like forgetting Troubling a Star and Madeleine L'Engle and middle school dreams, leaving words behind and being someone else entirely.

I felt I should tell you this. In case anyone else ever feels this way too.

Writing Advice is Life Advice

One question tops all the other questions in my inbox. In fact, I was getting the question so often that I added a page to this site addressing an aspect of it. But I wanted to jot down a few more thoughts for those wondering about themselves. The question is always some variation of "In terms of quality and quantity in your writing, how did you get to where you are today?"

The answer is three-fold:

I write every day. And I haven't just written every day for a few months—I've written nearly every single day since 1999. I challenge myself to not just write about my feelings, but to write on issues facing the world and Church today. I write reflections, I write in response, I write reactions (though most people don't see these), I write reasons. No subject is too humble for words to describe it, and no issue is too great that it doesn't require me to do some critical thinking about it.

I read every day. My parents used to ground me from reading when I was a young teenager and not much has changed since then. I read articles, books, blogs, tweets, etc. I don't limit my reading to only one side of the discussion. I have an insatiable curiosity to see things from every angle. Many people seem to be encouraged by the level-headedness I might bring to an otherwise hot discussion—I attribute this to the Holy Spirit and to my desire to see things from every point of view.

The Lord. That might sound like a cop-out, but hear me out. I absolutely believe the Lord uniquely wires each of us differently. Some of you can pick up an instrument and where others can only pluck at it, you make it sing. Some see gorgeous photographs in every moment. I'm not sure why, but the Lord uniquely wired me to think quickly and articulately. My mind works fast, discerning light from darkness, good from evil, insight from observation, and then my mind pieces together words just as quickly. It's how the Lord wired me and, believe me, I have fought that call for many reasons and many years.

My challenge to those of you wanting to hone your craft is this:

First, ask the Lord what He wants to do with your skills. Perhaps He doesn't want you to blog voraciously, but wants you to pour your words out to Him like David did, in prayers and songs. Perhaps He didn't wire you to do what comes so naturally to others, but He did wire you to do something: what is it? No offering poured out to Him is wasted.

Second, read and write. Don't only read one sort of material or write in one sort of style. Push yourself to appreciate most genres, views, and voices. I say "most" because there's never been more garbage out there in terms of words.

Lastly, should you decide to blog, do not push for a platform right away. Do not try to go viral or allow any sort of publicity go to your head. Those who are given platforms quickly usually haven't done the work necessary to stand up there for very long. It can feel really good to have someone appreciate your words enough to give you a place to say them publicly, but remember Jesus worked for his earthly father for 30 years before His public ministry. Sweeping sawdust, serving his parents and siblings, growing in wisdom, stature, and favor with the Lord and man.

We would do well to do the same.

(Yes, my hair really is that nappy in the morning. Sue me.)

Some helpful resources for aspiring writers: Wordsmithy by Doug Wilson On Writing by Stephen King Elements of Style by Strunk & White The Bible

What Love Is This?

Love is patient: it waits, it stills, it quiets before speaking.

With patience a ruler may be persuaded, and a soft tongue will break a bone. Proverbs 25:15

Love is kind: it coats its words in gentleness, extending the hand of graciousness to every person, deservedly or not.

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body. Proverbs 16:24

Love does not envy: it finds contentment in today, rejoices with others who have what it wants for itself.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. I Timothy 6:6

Love does not boast: it brings nothing but the cross, it is built of humility and the knowledge that it is only a steward.

As it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” I Corinthians 1:31

Love is not arrogant: it assumes the best of everyone, deserved or not, never stops learning & is patient while others learn too.

I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Romans 12:3

Love is not rude: love holds its tongue when there is an opportunity to best or beat another with words.

When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. Proverbs 10:19

Love doesn't insist on its own way: it shows the best way is the way to the cross through the cross.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

Love is not irritable: it doesn't get annoyed, pissed, frustrated, or angry. It is not "owed" anything.

Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. Ecclesiastes 7:9

Love is not resentful: it keeps no record of wrongs, when disappointed by someone, it forgives quickly, generously.

If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Colossians 3:13

Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing: it weeps at the sight of brokenness, dissension, disunity, and gossip.

You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:16

Love rejoices with the truth: it drops everything and sells everything to find truth instead of relying on what meets the eye.

The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Matthew 13:45-46

Love bears all things: it upholds the weight others can't hold, defending the defenseless and turning the other cheek.

But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:39

Love believes all things: it errs on the side of trust, not in man, but in God.

And those who know your name put their trust in you. Psalm 9:10

Love hopes all things: it never stops hoping for the resolution and reconciliation of all things under heaven.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. II Corinthians 5:18

Love endures all things: it holds up for the sake of the gospel, enduring persecution, gossip, slander, & injustice.

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus. Romans 15:5

Love never ends: it wakes up every day determined to do it all over again.

Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul. Psalm 143:8

This is a series of tweets I wrote today based from I Corinthians 13. Mostly I was preaching to myself, but thought they might encourage some others. 

Confession and Repentance

One of the best spiritual disciplines of my life, aside from regular time in the word and journaling, has been the rewriting of prayers from Valley of Vision —at the suggestion of my faithful mentor and friend. In the darkest seasons of depression for me, these prayers have brought clarity to my sin and to Christ's sufficiency; and in the seasons of rich joy, these prayers have been reminders that growth I enjoyed on the mountain has happened most often while in the valley. Rewriting them in my own words only increased the clarity and joy.

Here is an original prayer and below is my rewritten attempt. I highly recommend this exercise.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

My sin is a black hole, deep without end,

Guilty: Of the thought that I am capable alone And that You are not enough; Of disobedience to seeing Your Gospel Spread in every word of your Word; Of pushing You to my peripheral in my everydays.

All these things mock me, accuse me, stand around me and stare me down.

But they cannot win, and so I bless You.

Crush my corruptness. Give me grace to crush it as well.

My skin, my organs, my heart, my thoughts: these long for things that cannot satisfy; Only You can satisfy and give me the right heart, the right thoughts.

I'm grateful that you have not answered all of my prayers (for purpose, for people, for prizes) I've asked for good things, but not the right things--and so I don't have them. I've asked because I'm selfish and because I feel orphaned. I've asked because being a slave seems better than being a nomad.

Continue, Patience, have your perfect work, Pity my errant prayers, ask instead for me to Hope. Fling open the windows, air out my soul from false desires, All the dead dreams, All the things which are contrary to Your Kingdom.

I (try to) thank You for your wisdom. I (try to) thank you for your love. This foreign tasting mouth, words repeat: I thank you for your discipline Your cauldron which makes me into a perfect metal, without errors.

There is nothing more difficult to swallow, Lord, Than knowing that we are not communing (because of sin, because of fear, because of disappointment).

If you let me live through this, if I come out on the other side, Let it not be in pleasure, keeping my soiled securities. Give me holy suffering, only.

Lift the strangling of flesh I feel Everyday. Deliver me from boasting weaknesses Everyday. Keep my eyes unclouded by the lust of my flesh, my eyes, and my life, These things which make You small in my eyes.

The evidence of this in my life is that I will bless You, With my mouth, Upright One. Because, Helper, You have helped me.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 

Here are some other helpful tools if you find good encouragement in Valley of Vision.

Joe Thorn has put together a reading guide for VoV that I've used regularly for years.

A few years ago I began tweeting VoV snippets and since then asked Joe Louthan and Bliss Spillar to join in the effort. If you'd like to follow us here, feel free! @valleyofvision_ 

Bliss Spillar is also accumulating a team of people who might be interested in contributing to a scriptural guide for VoV. More info here.

The Battering That Takes Us All

I have a friend who has made a seeming mess of his life. This is nothing he wouldn't tell you himself and already has, in a way. Whenever we talk he makes it no secret that the path behind him is strewn with destruction.

But here's the thing about my friend: for one brief moment and then twenty more, in ways that wouldn't be known to him until nearly a decade later, he was leaving a indelible mark on this writer's life. It was his words, yes of course, editorials in the Wall Street Journal or evangelical news magazines, sentences crafted with poise and prose and pointed statements. But it was his beautiful self-deprecating confessionals that truly won me over.

"If a Christian can be a writer like this and a sinner like this, there is hope for me," I remember thinking one day after one such editorial rife with confessions of failure.

There are two camps of writers from where I stand: those who love words, who craft sentences that go down as smooth as brandy with a burning aftertaste, and those who love truth or opinion and wield it every which way no matter how it sounds.

To marry the two is an awful and beautiful call, and it's done so rarely, see?

One only needs to read twitter or the myriad of blogs in the world to see that opinions are never lacking. But insight and beauty? A paragraph (And who reads paragraphs anymore? But that is another post altogether.) that knocks out and draws close in the same moment? A rarity. Gold, if you ask me.

But to craft such words, the author has to be willing to wrestle. Not just wrestle with himself, but wrestle with God. And not just wrestle with God, but wrestle in full view of the world. And not just wrestle in view of the world, but do it in such a way to make the rest of us know it is a beautiful thing to wrestle well in the light of a God who sees and knows already.

Few are willing to sell tickets to that show.

So when you find such a writer (and please find one at least? They are rare, but they are there. Scour the internet, read the last article in every magazine, ask a friend with good taste in writing and truth.), tell them, if you can. Tell them their words changed you, shifted something inside of you. They will wave it off and talk about the unsanctified deeps of their soul, but tell them.

It is no easy task to craft a sentence, especially in a time when so many believe they're writers just because they have something to say. Saying something and saying it well are two different sayings, and we would all do well to remember that and keep our tongues still. So tell the ones who have said something and said it well that they have done so.

And maybe someday, nearly ten years after you first read their article, you will find yourself friends and fellow admirers of one another, and—which is more beautiful and humbling—you will find that it is now your own written wrestlings that comfort and encourage them in the battleworn deeps of their soul.

HOW to be a good INTROVERT

You don't get to be a successful introvert without having somewhat of a panicky gaze on your heart and head and all things you fairly constantly. What I mean is, if you want to know who's going to struggle with preoccupation of self more than anything, look in the mirror first, and then look to your left and right. We're everywhere—you can't hide from us. Why? Because we can't even hide from ourselves.

The benefit of this self-awareness is that if you want to know what I think about any issue, you can ask me. I will probably have a litany of thoughts on which I have ruminated and masticated until they're confiscated by some other mounting question. You want thoughts, I have thoughts.

The damage of this self-acuity is that when it comes time to put my eyes on someone or something else, I have so poorly trained my eyes in the direction they should go that I cannot hold my gaze for very long without looking away.

I can train this heart of mine to follow the tracks, but even that doesn't stop the train from derailing. The only steady things sometimes are the rails themselves.

The train has been derailing for me this year. It began with a glance away from beautiful Jesus and faithful Father, and it continued downward until my eyes have been setting somewhere south of healthy. So it's time to trust the tracks. Time to trust that training my heart will get me home and, oh friends, there is no other place I want to be than home.

The tracks for me are repentance and rest, quietness and trust—and if this post resonates with you, I would guess those are the tracks for you too. To do those things, though, it's going to mean sacrifice and I'm willing to do that.

Here are three of the ways my sacrifice might affect you:

I. If you primarily come to Sayable from Twitter, nothing will change there for you.

II. If you come from Facebook and you aren't a close friend, family, or colleague, I would recommend that you go over and Like this page. This is because I will be slowly be straightening the rails of life by keeping a close watch on what I ingest on social media—beginning by removing the amount of people on the friends list of my personal page.

III. I will also be shutting down comments on Sayable for a season. If you'd like to contact me, please do so through email, though understand it may take some time for me to respond.

I said above that I know my heart more than anything else I know, and the truth is that I love interacting with readers. I love hearing your stories. I love when you track me down, find me, and say, "Lore, your words, they have encouraged me and changed me." I love that. I love it mostly because I love knowing that the deep and agonizing work God does in me results in deep and beautiful work in you. But I'm afraid that sometimes all the words coming back at me don't bear the sort of fruit I want the beautiful work of God to bear. Please don't read into that statement or assume it to mean anything other than what I am saying: I want the work that God does in me to result in good fruit. If it does not, I want Him to prune it.

Thank you for loving me well and thank you for space. Thank you for always encouraging and thank you for challenging. I long to write for Jesus, but He lets me write it for you too, and I'm grateful for that.

JUDGING COVERS

I have never been one to listen to the writing coaches who say to "write through the fear" or "face the blank page and just write." I'm more of a start five paragraphs and erase every single character because I can't believe such drivel exists inside of me and then go into a quiet room and stare at the ceiling for three hours. You think I'm kidding, I'm not. Perfectionism, anyone? My default is to just give one of those generic "this is what's going on in life" sort of posts and I placate my perfectionism by saying, well, the folks at home, see? Or, well, linking up to interesting content is kind. Or, well, what else am I suppose to do?

The truth is that it's fear, though, plain and simple. It's fear that keeps me from posting anything and fear that drives me to post anything at all. I'm not asking for you to analyze that (I have good, wise people who address this fungus of my soul often and without fear, thanks.), I'm just telling you so that you can know that I'm built of fear, through and through. Books can't be judged by their cover and neither can people, which is what I think that idiom was intended to mean anyway.

So here's a cover, judge away:

READING: 

I don't read a lot of blogs. I just find that my soul gets bogged down if I'm spreading it thin and there are so many blogs and so many opinions and I want to give the best part of me to real live relationships as much as possible. This means that my google reader gets thinned out often and only the staples remain. One of those those staples is a brilliant teacher of the word from my church, Jen Wilkin. Her most recent post illustrates perfectly why I'm continually rooting out the extra voices in life.

I also clicked over to Allison Vesterfelt's blog this week when she wrote about how she handles conflict with her husband. I'm not married, obviously, but every good story contains conflict and my life isn't without it. So this post encouraged me to live palms up.

Emily Freeman is new to my feed reader, but I'm loving everything she puts out. This recent post on envy hit me squarely mostly because I don't think of myself as someone who struggles with envy, but this week, oh friends, this week the green monster has hitched an unwelcome ride on my shoulders. Her post was timely and good.

LISTENING: 

My church just put out a single of Come to Me, sung by the lovely Lauren Chandler. I've been listening to a rough copy recorded by one of my sound guy friends for a few months, but now that it's real and legit, I'll be listening more. So good.

I'm a sucker for hymns. I love singing theology because I love singing what IS true instead of what I want to be true or wish to be true. This version of Well With My Soul has been playing constantly this week.

LOVING: 

My yankee roommate is pretty amazing. I don't know if I tell you guys that much. But she is. One of the best people in my life. She's good at asking questions and she's good at just sitting beside me when my soul doesn't need counsel, just friendship. The other day she brought home the best chocolate known to man and this clinched the bestness of her.

A year ago I took on the task to start tweeting through The Valley of Vision, a book of prayers that has encouraged me and discipled me (if it's possible for a book to do that). As with most things I do in life, I lost steam quickly. But people kept following and retweeting and I felt like it was a shame to let it go entirely. Enter Bliss Spillar, a fellow tweeter and VOV lover! He'll be helping out over there and is already doing a great job. So I love that. For sure.

DOING: 

Went to go see Moonrise Kingdom, wore the only thing Scoutish I owned, a shirt I made a few years ago with a tie around the neckline. Love the movie. Didn't stop grinning through the entirety of it. I'm serious.

One of my lovely girls from home, played a show with Seryn in Dallas last week. It was special to see her playing alongside one of my favorite bands; it was special to bring all my DFW friends to meet her. But it was most special to just SEE her. We spent the next morning together just laughing, crying, praying, and loving one another. I love that girl.

Two and a half years ago I vowed to never buy a car again. But here's the deal: I can't drive the same car for the rest of my life. And it's really, really hard to buy a car when you're a single girl who barely knows the trunk from the hood. I'm blessed to have a roommate with a big brother who takes his role very seriously with all of us as 625 Meadow. Within 24 hours we found this little car and she became mine! It was the most painless, easy car buying experience of my life.

I love my job. Have I mentioned that recently? I really love my job. This image was snapped recently while we were setting up for a viewing of Goodnight, Red Light, a documentary we filmed about human trafficking in India. I hate trafficking and this is almost entirely why I love my job.

Last night Matt finished up a six month series we've been doing at church on Galatians. It has been one of the most challenging and pastoring series I've ever walked through and I'm so glad that I have another few months of walking through it with my homegroup as we finish up the material. Listen to this series, friends, seriously, listen.

That's all folks. Long enough? Got my fingers moving, that's for sure!

FISHING on the FLY

I read stories, A River Runs Through It and The River Why, and both made me into a fisherman. But two summers ago, on one of my last nights on the lake, I caught a fish and it made me a storyteller. The fish got away, but it was a big one, heavy and strong, as all the ones that get away are. My friend Matthew let me have my story and a week later his older brother caught my fish. It was as heavy and strong as I knew it was.

When I was small, I went fishing in the early morning with my father and my older brother on Lake Nockamixon. We wore denim jeans with holes in the knees and we wore flannel shirts. We stood on the rocky edges in the cove casting and reeling, casting and reeling and I caught a small bass, my first fish and my father said we should let it go. I slid it from my hands, into the pool beside me and watched its speckled body through water reflecting the sky like one of those paintings on the PBS shows we watched in the afternoons. My first fish.

I helped my uncle catch a fish when I was nine years old. He kept it for himself and I never said otherwise. Hindsight says that if anyone was helping anyone it was probably my uncle helping me. But I wanted bragging rights more than the fish itself.

A writer never knows when the stories will quit him or her and the stories have quit me this month. I feel like every word I bring up is a bottom dweller and better left to swim away in clearer waters. The words I bring to the surface are the ones that get away, no matter how strong they feel on the line and in my hands, they get away.

This makes me still a storyteller in the same way, though. I am simply telling the story of words instead of letting the words tell the story that should have been.

Tonight I feel sick in my soul and the words feel far, far from me.

I remember a line from A River Runs Through It. It was underlined in my copy of the book and probably written it on a scrap of paper tacked to my wall: Many of us would probably be better fishermen if we did not spend so much time watching and waiting for the world to become perfect. 

And I know that is me, that I am watching and waiting for something to become perfect, a final crescendo into resolution, the one that doesn't ever get away. But I am a writer, I am. I may spend half my time trying to convince myself that I am a writer, but the truth is that I am one and the only way I am one at all is to stop waiting for the perfect fish to hook my line and still cast anyway.

  ...I am watching and waiting for something...Click to tweet this post  

A MAN'S GIFT

It has been almost a month of writer's block. I pushed through for the first two weeks—one ought to write if they are on a writing sabbatical. But these past two weeks have pushed me into a corner with a blanket over my head.

I didn't have a laptop (Where is your pen and paper?). I didn't know what to write about (Write about driving through a Texas rain and feeling an inkling of home. Write about the sounds in your house, the washer and dryer spinning, the cicadas ascending and descending, the water boiling in the kettle.). I felt tired of writing (Write anyway.). And I felt, mostly, after reading and rereading 50,000 words written in a month, that I have nothing to say that's worth saying after all.

He told me it would happen. And he told me it would happen. And she told me it would happen too. But write on, they said, you have a gift, so write on.

Before I left a friend slipped a verse into my hands: "A man's gift makes room for him and brings him before the great." 

I have spent many years trying to understand that verse because many people have slipped it into my hands, written on the inside cover of a gifted book, hidden in the body of an email, hands laid on my head while those words are spoken. It is as though God, Who knows my aversion to life verses, life mottos, or life-plans, has said He knows better than I do anyway.

The truth is that I don't understand what that verse means. Not really. Does it mean that a gift will create space and margins in our lives? Does it mean that our gifts will make a way for us, a path clearly lit? Does it mean that our gifts will hollow out our insides, scraping the womb of our imagination and birth something more beautiful than the gift itself?

I have no answer for that.

I only know that if a gift is worth giving than there must be some sacrifice involved and more and more I live as though I'm the one making the sacrifice (I haven't got the time, the laptop, the words.), but the gift wasn't mine to begin with, was it?

Sometimes I settle on the reality that I wasn't just saved from something (sin, death, and a nasty stubborn streak), but I have been saved to something. And sometimes I settle on the reality that what I have been saved to means writing when I don't have the words and listening well to people and suffering long in areas of aching want. Being saved to something means that I am always looking for ways to bring Him glory and make His name great—even when the path seems less than clearly lit and my insides are scraped dry—because He is the only Great worth going before.

So write on.

A ROOM CALLED REMEMBER

"The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts.

We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived."

Fredrick Buechner

SAID

Whatever your heart clings

 to and confides in, 

that is really your God.
MARTIN LUTHER

The punishment of 

every disordered mind 

is its own disorder.
ST AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO

Man's nature, so to speak, 

is a perpetual factory of idols.
JOHN CALVIN

It was less like seeing 

than like being 

for the first time seen, 

knocked breathless 

by a powerful glance.
ANNIE DILLARD

TURN it OFF

I'm doing some gymnastics over at Single Roots today. You're welcome to join the spectator sport by clicking on this trusty little link.

"Moving to Texas was a good decision—except for in Texas, or at least the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, everyone has a smart phone. Back in upstate New York, where I hail from most recently, phones are...

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a COFFEE DATE

Pretend with me for a minute. We've finally decided to make this happen, meet face to face, you've been reading my blog, I've been reading yours. We feel like friends. We're Facebook friends. Our friends think we're friends. So let's just be friends.

We're at a cool, independent coffee shop. We going to be transparent and honest and authentic, or whatever the hip kids are calling it these days. I'm wearing my favorite pair of jeans, you're wearing your favorite t-shirt. We're just going to talk. And drink coffee. But talk, mostly.

We exchange a few little introductions, banter about innocuous coincidences, laugh at things that may or may not be funny or ironic or kindred.

But brimming beneath both of our surfaces we are filled with so many things to say.

I want to tell you so many things about me and about who you think I am and who I'm not. I want to tell you that I'm not big-time or out of your league or too cool. But I also desperately want you to know that I'm something and I'm worth your time and I'm a cool kid too.

I want you to know that I've done awesome things in my life and I also want you to know that I feel like I've done nothing with my life. I want to say that despite the past two years and the life which has been breathed into me, I am terrified almost constantly that the honeymoon is over and it's all downhill from here.

I want to tell you that I want to matter to someone, and I'm okay if that someone is you, but I want to know that I matter to that someone and so you might need to tell me that I do. I might need to hear that from you. But know this, I'm willing to go out on a limb and not look a gift horse in the mouth in order to say the same thing to you.

I want you to matter to me.

And then I'll take a deep breath, take a sip of coffee, one sugar, a bit of cream, and I'll wait for you to tell me everything you need to say too.

PS. To all of you blog readers who I've met in real life 
or who I will meet in real life: this isn't about you, I promise. 
Except it is about you, I promise.

BY DESIGN

My great-grandfather was an artist and so was my grandfather, and my father, when he took a pencil to napkins in restaurants or bic pens to paper in our kitchen, he was an artist too. He, like all parents of burgeoning children, thought me an artist too, but I felt that every sparse compliment was his way of taking ownership over me: this is mine, I created her and now she creates too. And so I stopped drawing.

I still inked in margins and doodled on homework, but the real work of artistry happened in my head where it would be safe from the gift of DNA and genetics. I am stubborn like this.

I was in middle school when my father left his position of 25 years to work as an entrepreneur, a graphic artist. I couldn't understand work being a calling or working at your gift because work, to me, was laborious and had little reward. My parents were always into hard work and never into allowances, both models which I am grateful for now, but despised then.

"You could do this too, you know," he would tell me and I would shrug my shoulders.

He had boxes of paper samples and a fanned book of colors with codes I didn't understand, but I was secretly fascinated by it all. Sketches of designs and type and programs he left open on his computer—all of it some secret world into digital design. This was 1992 or 1993 and he was just starting out, so his tools were crude, but his creations were not.

I remember the first design of his that I saw in the real world, a car-dealership logo on a highway in Upper Bucks County. I knew all the headache and pain and frustration and fears that had gone into that logo and I knew that though the rights no longer belonged to him, the artistry did.

In college I was the senior editor of our literary magazine, a 100 page annual of the finest our English and Arts departments could offer up on the altar of narcissism. I was the editor because I was a hard worker and a good writer and our faculty liked that about me, but I knew next to nothing about layout or design. It was the first time I touched the digital tools that had come so far in only a decade, since my father was towing the line of graphic art.

I spent hours on those programs, aligning margins, editing content, placing objects and that semester I also took a class in digital illustration. I found the classes easy and intuitive, a creative outlet from the technical writing and literary analysis I was spending the bulk of my time doing. The design lab was a secret and dark room, special permission only and I was let in—they let me in.

The following semester I took a class in painting and somehow became friends with the professor, a young, brooding artist who pushed my skills from flat, boring still-lifes to my real love, mixed media with a message. I illustrated my favorite Flannery O'Connor story and gave the finished product to my mother for Christmas. I rarely go to Florida, where she lives, so I haven't seen it since.

I finished college, picking up enough art classes for a minor, though graduated with plans to only write for the rest of my life. But DNA is a hard beast to beat and now it is my desk that holds paper samples and a fan-book of Pantone color codes, my pens and pencils inking sketches on notebook papers.

The truth is that I design, though I am only marginally good at it, because to do what I really want to do is too fearful a step to take. Sometimes I think about my dad, who quit after 25 years to pursue a dream and a gift and I wonder if I will ever be as brave as him to stop doing what I accidentally discovered I could do, and to start doing what I know I was born to do.

I {you} ALWAYS DISAPPOINT YOU {me}

I was disappointed by someone this week.

She doesn't know me. Once we shook hands, exchanged smiles, shared a meal when she came to speak at my university. But she doesn't know me and she didn't disappoint me on purpose. My disappointment stems more from the heroic ideal of her in my head and less from something she actually did or didn't do.

The truth is, what can you know from a person but what they share with you, in huddled conversations and knowing inflections?

I maintain that I am easy to know, only because if you ask me, I'll tell you anything. But the real truth is that unless you ask me, I won't tell you anything.

Which, I'm afraid, is the real disappointment in all of this.

I'm afraid I go around disappointing people because what they know of me is not what I have told them, but what they have perceived to have been told by me. Whether though my writing, my friendship, my presence or otherwise. And this may be true, I may go around disappointing people more often than I wish. In fact, if I haven't disappointed you, you're probably in the minority.

The thing is, this girl who disappointed me didn't do so by being something other than what she really, really is. She never lied to me. She never pretended to be anything other than another stumbling Christian, fumbling through life with a pen in one hand and a scotch in the other. She never preached anything but what she had lived and was living and I would be a fool to not know how dastardly frightening that is.

My disappointment arose when I realized that what she had lived and was living was exactly what I am afraid of in my own life. The difference is that she'd gone ahead and done something with her life in the meantime.

I was disappointed by a perception of her that proved true: she had lived and was living and telling her story as she went—but the story forked and she took the unexpected route.

Not that route, I silently cheered in my mind, knowing, just knowing she'd do the right thing. Not that route, I dismally thought as the first step was taken toward it. Not that route, I wept, when I heard the news.

It seems there have been a lot of of her recently, smoke and mirrors, guises I build around heroes I love, writing I see myself in. Blogs and twitter and email make us feel all so small, though, so close, so human, so near, so. . . disappointing.

Writers and filmmakers talk about the element of surprise that should be present in every good story, but isn't the strength of the story we're telling with our lives the fact that we know the end of the story? Isn't that what makes the best story? Isn't that why the Story of God is still the bestseller, after hundreds of years? Because we know the end? Because the fork in the road has already been chosen?

Yet I'm still building fortresses of my perceptions, conclusions that will be disappointed yet again because I put my hope in a guess and not in God.

___________________
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