on the team

I’ve tucked myself away, down the hall in my bedroom with my laptop and the thought that has been niggling away at my mind all day long.   Kids are each busy with their own pursuits, happy and not hungry, at least for now.  I glance at the clock.  OK, I’ll give myself 15 minutes.  I slowly sink into the quiet of the room and begin to type…

An hour later, the kids come in wondering about dinner and I tear my mind and heart away from the words to smile into their faces and say, yes, I’ll get right on that dinner thing, all the while marveling that an hour just slipped by like sand through my fingers.

Since finishing the 31 day series, I have been wondering, should I keep doing this?   Does writing really have a place on my daily to do list?  In order to write daily in October, I slipped my writing in the cracks of my days, taking my laptop to horse lessons and tapping away in the car while the girls rode, slipping back to my room during a spot of quiet for a short writing session, putting thoughts into words while my husband slept beside me.

Is this what the bloggers I love to read do?  Or perhaps they have set hours, writing time, an office and a desk and no interruptions.  I am sure there are as many ways to do this writing thing as there are people who do it.

I have still been writing some since October, and like I told my husband, when I write time just FLIES. It feels a bit like being “in the zone” as a runner, where the rhythm and strength of my body makes me feel like I could literally run forever.  My heart and my brain are fully engaged in the process of painting word pictures, taking moments of my day and looking carefully at them because as I do that, I am more apt to see the fingerprints of God more clearly, to hear Him in the quiet of the tapping keys whispering the lessons that He has for me here in my every day, ordinary life.

In this place of wondering about my writing and whether or not I should keep doing it, I read Holley Gerth’s blog (reading her blog over the years has been one thing God has used to encourage me that I have a story from Him to tell) and followed her link to (in)courage where I read about the God-Sized Dreams Team that she is creating.  My heart raced as I read and like a diver who pushes aside the fear and wondering and just jumps off that high dive, I filled out the application.  What can it hurt?  I thought.  It is alright if I am not chosen.  Just filling out the application was a huge step, and really, right then, my thumping heart and clammy hands told me it was enough. 

Writing this, the lesson rises up clearly before me. What do I feel God calling me to do right now, this minute?  I need to do it.  Read a book to my girls.  Yes.  Make dinner for friends.  Yes.  Invite the international student over for a meal.  Yes.  I often spend time jumping far ahead of the step in front of me, “seeing” things that may never be, letting the stress of might be’s and what if’s override the moment when all I am responsible for is taking the next step.  He says He will give me the grace and strength and power to do that thing He has for me to do.  What I DON’T have to do is to see to the end of the six months of being on the God-Sized Dreams Team and how it will impact my life, or what scary things may be in store along the way because that is God’s department, not mine.  And wherever these next steps take me, He will be there.

Did you catch that?  I got an email this morning and it looks like, contrary to what happened every week in junior high pe class, I am on the team. 

Cool, huh?