When I was in my teens, I made decisions framed with this question: “How will this matter in 5 years?”  As the eldest of three girls in a broken apart family, I became my own guardian angel. I imagine that five years must have seemed both a lifetime and, perhaps, foreseeable. The question levelled rocky terrain.

I’ve been stuck lately between too many ideas that seem too grand for me. So I decided to blog snippets from the notebooks I’ve faithfully kept for almost 20 years. Holding true to my five year frame, I will begin with the notebook that I started closest to 5 years ago and also happened to be a year of great change.  My hope is to return to my intention when I began this blog— to unselfconsciously listen to my life—in public.

Katherine Paterson, whose novels touch a deep place in me, said in an interview about her novel, The Great Gilly Hopkins:

I wrote it as a confession. These stories don’t work unless you find yourself in them…that the deeper you go inside yourself, the deeper the reader is going to go.  I was writing about my own fears and questions… Writers are very private people who run around naked in public.

Even though my blogs are publicly available, I don’t often share that I am a writer because it seems too private and even seems like a selfish thing.  As I share raw footage from my old notebooks, I will listen again to go deeper inside and yes, run around naked in this little bit of public. I hope you will find yourself here, too.

Note: I was reading Walter Brueggeman Advent devotional, Celebrating Abundance.

December 2, 2018 

Today I read that Advent is preparation for the demands of newness that will break the tired patterns of fear in our lives.  That is what I so desperately need to break out of the straight jacket of darkness, as Buechner calls it, that keeps me reactive and meeting challenge with brace rather than surrender and openness that allows for God to be present.  

The prayer is for me.

God, visit me so that I might get carried away 
to do obedient things that I haven’t done before
— kingdom things that I didn’t think I had in me.

Break the fear and inwardness that keeps me bound.  May I be ready to enter the place you have already prepared.