When Recognition Rips You Wide Open

October 19, 2012 by 34 Comments

I missed the panel discussion among authors and publishers on the writers retreat at Laity Lodge. But I did find a snatch of time to ask Lauren Winner my question.

“What is the best piece of advice you could give a writer about publishing,” I ask her standing in the breezeway after lunch on our last day. She looks down at the sidewalk in her silver horn-rims, neck bent over a clergy collar and black dress. Standing in her birkish sandals with unshaven legs, she looks up with a generous smile and responds, “Publishing isn’t going to change your life as much as you think it is. You’re still you, whether you publish or not.” Then she glances toward the Frio.

That wasn’t the answer I was expecting.

After some prodding, she admits that she does receive more open doors for speaking and meeting people, and yes people do recognize her more often since becoming an author. But publishing isn’t a magic pill for happiness.  You still live with the same person that you are, regardless of the authoring credentials.

And the gavel hits the sidewalk with a final thud.

Then I realize, her wisdom, it really is the best answer.

Because it’s abiding in Jesus that determines our fulfillment, not a book deal.

The need for recognition is an insatiable beast with a constant growling stomach. No matter how many shares, re-tweets, signed book proposals and pleasant comments we swallow, the appetite returns like pouring water on a sandy beach.

While I sit in my office in my pj’s until noon, checking Facebook updates, reading blogs and sharing what I find on Twitter, I ask God to help me let go of the desire for recognition from anyone but Him.

And I realize that I haven’t filled my bird feeders since we got back from vacation. In August.

The birds flit full on the branches every day since.

A few posts I enjoyed reading this week on the theme of Letting Go:

Mary struggles with unanswered questions about her daughter’s sickness after she returns from Haiti: “Then that helpless feeling that I had come to the end of myself. The rope that once felt strong, withered in my hands and I let go.” They need our prayers.

Ro faces her fears and joins Facebook, “From this one step…I could breath more easily…I felt an element of freedom.”

Amber on how and where we let go of the chains that keep us captive, “Undoing chains means calling things what they are. It means that we pour out and also that we’re honest when we’re running dry.”

 

This is #19 in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up any post you’ve written on the theme of letting go in the comments today. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

 

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Letting Go of the Schedule

October 3, 2012 by 34 Comments

It was just supposed to be a brief walk to charge my dead phone while we had a window of time. And the next thing I knew we were driving through water.

Deidra and I walked the wet gritty back to the house with computers hanging in bags over our shoulders so I could plug in my phone with a borrowed charger.  We met Marcus in the kitchen. He was opening pantry doors to find a glass, while his wife took a nap. He asked if we were interested in driving into Leakey, the little town closest to Laity Lodge.

I looked at Deidra while I catalogued the schedule in my mind. Thinking about the next session and conversations we might miss at the retreat if were gone too long. I let her decide.

She said she was game. I put on my tennis shoes.

We drove through the canyon floor of limestone covered in the Frio like water under cellophane. Pulled up to Leakey Mercantile, where time turned her head and laughed.

Deidra tried on cowboy hats. I scoured aisles of candy cigarettes and cans of green beans the size of tires. Marcus pointed out products on the wooden shelves that were made in Texas.

We stacked salsa, chips and ice cream on the counter under the smile of long-haired string beans wearing hunting caps and faded t-shirts. They held eye contact a bit longer than the customers before us.

I wore my nametag the whole time, forgot I had it on.

Marcus stopped at an overlook on the way back to take in the panoramic view of the 1900-acre ranch in the Hill country where we steeped in peace for three nights, storytelling about the generosity of the landowners as we snapped photos through the chain link.

When he discovered we hadn’t seen Blue Hole yet, we jumped in the car and kept driving. I looked at my watch. That’s when I let go of the schedule to see all of this:

Because sometimes you have to let go of agendas, to-do lists, schedules, and expectations you place on yourself in order to receive the gifts He picks out with you in mind.  

And to think I almost missed unwrapping the spontaneous memory I will hold close to my heart for years to come. I’m so glad Deidra said yes.

Do you have a hard time letting go of your schedule and lists to accomplish? How do you respond to unexpected “interruptions”?

This is the third post in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up your post on the topic in the comments on Friday of each week so we can glean from your perspective. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

Linking with Ann and Emily.

 

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No Apologies – Wisdom From Lauren Winner

October 2, 2012 by 53 Comments

There will be no apologies about your words. It’s what Lauren Winner says, swiping her arms like an umpire yelling safe to the writer.

I push back, press into the rungs of the ladderback and insert my breath into the collective sigh. We’re fifteen writers learning from an author of hardcovers.  I’ve held all of her books in my hands, alongside a highlighter.

She travels the country, teaching writers and scholars in prestigious institutions and our idealistic views about writing, they expose themselves in her silver horn-rims at the front of the room.  Views that hold creativity captive to imitation.

We notice how much we do it. How we let the air out of our thoughts by prefacing with an apology. How it flattens the essence of who we are.

She sheds the idealism by extending a hand of permission, to be ourselves.

It’s a game changer.

Because we do apologize.  Often. For how we look, what we say, for the behavior of our children, the dinner we cook or don’t cook. We apologize for the messy sprawled out on the playroom floor, for the dirty dishes on the counter, for the soiled seats in our car. For not being spiritual enough.

And Jesus rejoices over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)

Not when you wear the latest trends, compose the perfect sentence, cash a check for all your hard work, recite the perfect prayer. Now, in your pajamas at noon, seated there in front of the computer screen with hair you haven’t washed in three days.

Jesus is pulling up a chair next to you, looking in your eyes and asking, “What can I do for you.”  How will you respond if you can’t apologize for who you are not?

This is the second post in the series 31 Days of Letting Go. You can read the collective here. If you are a writer, I invite you to link up your post on the topic in the comments on Friday of each week so we can glean from your perspective. Subscribe to receive the series in your inbox or feed by adding your address in the side bar under Follow Redemptions Beauty.

Linking with Jen, Jennifer, WLWW, Duane.

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I Never Expected This

October 1, 2012 by 61 Comments

When I started writing on this blog a year ago, I had no idea how a patch of sunlight would find its way through the dark canopy of my fears. Expose a rare flower in the High Calling, blooming generosity on the forest floor of my writing life. Its petals lying open handed, fragrance of Christ.

This group of writers, they offer the loaf of communion, one encouraging bite at a time.

As writers, we find the place to pull the cork on words huddled in the corner of gate 14B among the empty vinyl seats. Spread out on a café table infused with espresso in its cracks. Under the glow of fluorescent between jeans hanging in rows and robes on hooks. In a dimly lit room of shallow breath, lying beside the rise and fall of life we bore.

We pour paragraphs like coffee from a carafe, brewed early, left warm on the counter. Craft words of worried ways and welcome wandering. String sentences of settling in and spilling out. Wonder if what swirls in the cup will taste good, leaving them thirsty for more.

Inspiration scribbles into journals lying beside soppy cutting boards of ripe tomatoes, idle at the red light on the way to carpool.  And in the midst of flipping hamburgers on the grill, we realize that writing is more than endless laundry piles. It’s a lover our heart yearns for the moment we part.

But we win the battles of the mind in the company of our kindred kind.

At Laity Lodge, we pass tea carafes and lemon poppy seed loaf boards pondering our place on the grassy shore among the five thousand and baskets of bread.  Some of us stand beside Jesus passing out bread to their hungry group of fifty. Others wait along the fringe, uncertain about their place among eager crowds; worry there won’t be enough to feed everyone.

And the quiet waters of the Frio seep into the empty cracks life has worried into the soul with the words of wisdom gathered around the table. We claim victory over platforms and page views, agents and proposals, self-doubt and sorrow in the warm embrace of a fellow sojourner.

Because In the words of Ashley Cleveland, “It’s really about the people, it’s always about the people.” And all the way to heaven, is heaven.

While writing becomes oxygen to the soul squeezed tight with the cares of life, relationship with Him, with you, it’s the muse pulsing words to life.

I follow those who walk before me, stepping over boulders to sit on limestone terraces. Rest under cypress arms bent over Madeline L’Engle and Eugene Peterson stretched out with pen and prose in days gone by. Imagine their toes dangling in the water.

And I let go of needing to know all the answers about my future. Because this life He serves in the smorgasbord of options, it truly is a high calling. I’ll let him fill my plate, one meal at a time.

I’ll be writing here every day for the month of October on the practice of letting go. Because really, it seems to be a sacred echo in my life – letting go of what keeps me from walking in freedom.  Perhaps it is for you too.

We’ve started our journey sitting together on a limestone terrace, watching the rainfall on the Frio and who knows where we’ll end up. Maybe that’s part of letting go, not having a map or a final destination.

I know, it makes me a little nervous too.

I hope you’ll join me each day for a short story as a reflection to start your day. You can link back to this page to find each post, in case you miss one or several.

If you are a writer, you can join the community of 31 Dayers.  I invite you to link up a story you wrote on the theme of letting go in the comments on Friday of each week in October. I look forward to reading your words.

Linking with Ann, Michelle and Laura.

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Be Courageous, Reveal Your Art

September 27, 2012 by 22 Comments

Slow, it’s how we walk up the wide wooden staircase behind her, holding on to the spindles, and breathing in the era of grace. Stop on every third step while Janet explains each of her paintings hanging on the mahogany wall over our left shoulder. Like a docent telling us the secrets behind the brush strokes, we get the backstage tour of Tara by Scarlett herself.

I met Janet and Tom at a church dinner, on a picnic table over a bowl of steamy chili. She extends an invitation up two flights of steep white see-through, to the tree house over her garage that is her art studio. When I tell her about how I amuse myself with watercolors on the weekends, she offers some lessons for the price of conversation.

She and Tom left their upper crust Virginia home to retire on the water and I can see it in her eyes. The loneliness of pulling up roots leaves her a stump of her former flourish, hidden in a field of wild flowers.

Those meetings of brushes swirling pigment grows a friendship. She invites my Aunt Paula and me to lunch while she is in town. Paula, she feels the ache too. Of roots, dangling free clinched in a hand of new dirt.

Janet walks with scales weighing heavy on the right, leads us to the top floor, through stacks of books and ledgers lying open on tables of southern sprawl. Tom’s chair spins our direction and away from the computer screen like a monk hidden among the holy. His head tilts up to get a good look at the visitors traipsing through his bifocals and waves.

We’re on our way to the bathroom to look at another painting.

Huddled together among the pink tile, we admire green jar illumination holding flowers on a window ledge. That’s when I feel it. Drops of inspiration bleed into lonely crevices, filling up the longing.

Each painting drips with a chapter in the story of an artist that inspires courage and beauty.

My aunt flies back to Ohio, signs up for watercolor classes from a local artist, forms a weekly huddle in her basement with fellow pilgrims, and gives countless paintings away.  Many hang on my walls today.

And just like that day of tilted light when God took us on a walk to tell the story of what it means to live loved, to express love freely and give it away, He wants to uncover His imprint on you too. We need your art. 

It will be quiet here for a few days. I’ll be away at Laity Lodge for a Writers Retreat, meeting some friends in person that I’ve only known on-line, learning the art of a sentence from Lauren Winner. It’s my first, so I look forward to sharing what I discover with you next week.

And those paintings in this post? My Aunt Paula reads my blog, collects inspiration from the photos and paints a few of them to give away.

Looking for some inspiration to share your art? Read Emily Freeman’s  31 Days to Change the World Series at Chatting at the Sky, Amber Haines Monday posts on Writing, and Jeff Goins encouragement here.

 

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Because Imperfect is the Best Kind of Summer Vacation

June 4, 2012 by 66 Comments

“Do you like it here, would you ever want to come back,” H asks me laying on the bed while I look for my swimming suit in the suitcase. A breeze blows cool through the screen in the window moving the hem of my maternity dress. I look up at him and smile, “Yes, I want to come back.”

We’ve been married seven years and it’s my first trip to the family cottage in Ontario, Canada.  A blue shuttered sprawl with her back to the Bonnechere Provincial Park. She faces lavender sky of golden sunsets on a lake of glass, tucked under pines. Her left arm paddles river of sunbathing turtles on limbs of drowned trees. Boats, oars, and life vests lay strewn across her sandy lap.

H embraces summer’s freedom with his grandparents here as a child, where they still call him Sandy, though his hair mottles gray now. The dark paneled walls, mismatched furniture and silverware collect family stories for sixty years.

When mice scurry between our feet, hide under furniture, I scream.  His ninety-year old grandmother traps them on the kitchen counter looking for pie.

It’s twenty minutes to the nearest grocery store. They don’t stock natural peanut butter. However, they do sell warm sticky buns.

There is not cable television, internet access, or cell service.

These things, it’s why he asks me.

Every summer since becoming parents sixteen years ago, the cottage calls us back to join two generations. Two weeks of walks down a shady gravel road for an ice cream cone at the corner store.  To forget what a mirror looks like and wonder why we bother packing more than swimsuits.

Because sometimes you have to let go of the clock and all her to-do lists of expectation, to remember who you are – in God’s time.

Madeline L’Engle says, “In kairos (God’s time) we are completely unselfconscious, and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time.”

We shake off should and have-to and weary shoulders transform Cinderella.

Harrison learns how to walk, paddle a canoe, chop wood with an axe, catch frogs and ride a bike during those weeks. While Murielle stands up on ski’s, pulls fish from a pond, gets her ears pierced and finds out a frozen juice box is better than a popsicle.

Two years ago, Murielle’s namesake, her Great Grandmother Muriel, teaches me how to make a pie. Because we follow directions for years but her pies always, taste better.  Murielle decides to film it so we don’t miss a secret step.

We savor every succulent, blueberry spoonful of crusted sweetness washed down with decaf. Then watch stars fall in midnight sky by fire embers glowing like fireflies on still shores.

When grandmother goes to bed, we don’t realize it’s the last time we’ll break bread together, eat from the sweetness of her wise hands. She meets Jesus face to face during a sound sleep in her favorite place, after the satisfaction a good meal, seated around a table with the seed of her womb.

Her prayers linger now in the antique dishes in the china cabinet, on the plastic tablecloth around the picnic table in the gazebo, in the indented seat of the needlpoint chair next to the lamp.

And yes, I will go back again this summer. Because that place, its more than a vacation spot, it reminds me of who I am.

Do you have a special vacation spot or summer memory?

I’m joining the High Calling’s Community Writing Project on Summer Vacations hosted by Charity Singleton and Deidra Riggs.

Linking with Multitudes on Mondays, Playdates with God, Soli Deo Gloria, On Your Heart Tuesday, Just Write.

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How Love Changes Everything

February 1, 2012 by 48 Comments

When I enter the bedroom, put my phone on the charger for the night, he lays on my side of the bed, warming up my spot. He loves me this way for as long as I can remember. And when I approach my side of the bed to crawl in, he looks up from the Kindle to see my eyes and asks, “How are you?”

It’s not a casual question. He’s looking for the truth.

I hesitate to respond. Because sometimes the truth of what we hide on the inside, when self-doubt enters through the back door, it isn’t pretty. I vacillate. Count the cost of revealing the truth, about the lies I have just told myself.

That I feel insignificant when I read about what others do to advance the Kingdom, wonder if I do enough.  And really, it’s not just about sharing my faith, the accusations shout when it comes to parenting, being a wife, a friend, a housekeeper, and writer. Am I enough? Doing enough?

And when I tell him what swirls in my cerebral hemisphere, he throws his hands up in exasperation. Exasperation over my refusal to believe the truth he tells me repeatedly for twenty-one years now. That I am beautiful just the way I am, that God uses me in ways unique to how He created me, that I am enough.

Comparison is a sneaky diversion, a fork in the road to destiny. This truth telling, it keeps me from wrong turns, roadblocks, and major delays due to re-construction. It splits me open to heavens eyes, puts me back on the journey to hope.

When he apologizes, says he is sorry for the way he responds, love clears the fog that hangs between conviction and condemnation.  Clears vision when the reflection of me blurs.

It is hard to explain how love from a man that stands sturdy through wavering days and wondering can transform a girl into woman. Explain how fragments become pieces of beauty when tended by a farmer of truth who trusts in the power of redemption above sainthood to grow a person.

Marriage isn’t about meeting needs, but laying them down and forgetting you ever had them.

When I crawl into the warm spot he left on my side of the bed, curl up next to him, hold onto his arm, I laugh. All that guilt I carried into the room, it looks hilarious and out of place laying here beside love.

Joining the High Calling over at Jennifer’s place to explore the joys and struggles of marriage during the month of February. Also linking with Ann, and for one last time (for now) with Emily and Bonnie at Faith Barista, Unwrapping Love.

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