Archive for September 2015
I Hate to Tell You This
Posted on: September 27, 2015
No, really. I DO hate to tell you this. Don’t worry – it’s not for your own good; it’s for mine. Well, maybe it will do you good, too – I never know what effects my scribblings may have.
Have you ever done the science experiment tasting a bit of paper that’s been treated with phenylthiocarbamide (PTC), a chemical that only some people can taste? For those who can’t taste it, the paper just tastes like paper did when we ate those magazines as toddlers. For those of us who can taste the chemical, though, the paper’s taste is bitter and entirely unpleasant, screwing up our face and making us want to spit the paper out and go rinse with something to take the taste away.
At the writers’ conference in April, one of the speakers, Tony Kriz, gave us a list of 10 questions he asks himself before publishing any piece of writing. (Tony is a challenger of the too-content, too-settled, and too-tradition-bound; find him at www.TonyKriz.com , or check out his books Aloof: Figuring Out Life With a God Who Hides, Neighbors and Wise Men: Sacred Encounters in a Portland Pub and Other Unexpected Places, Welcome to the Table: Post-Christian Culture Saves a Seat for Ancient Liturgy.) Two of the questions prompted a soul reaction just as that PTC-treated paper caused a sensory reaction: I wanted to spit them out and go gargle with something more pleasant!
Over the next few weeks, I did, in fact, try to find something to distract me from them, or find mental justifications why they didn’t apply to me – or maybe only just a little bit. The attempt was an unmitigated failure. Those questions had burrowed into my soul to stay, so it was obvious that they weren’t being posed by Tony, although his was the mouth through which they were delivered. Questions that spark this kind of reaction can only come from the LORD. I resigned myself that they were either going to just sit there and gnaw at me, or I was going to have to look them in the face. O.U.C.H.
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to confess in generalities? We’re all comfortable confessing “I’m not perfect”, or admitting that “I make mistakes”, because no one on earth can deny the truth of those statements in their own instance. There may even be particular sins or short-comings we don’t mind confessing. For example, I don’t mind copping to being too impatient or owning up that I really shouldn’t have eaten that third piece of pie, because I’m in such good company on those offenses. Getting down to the personal, however, is another story altogether!
The two questions that are eating away at me are “Am I making myself the hero of my own story?” and “Have I thrown anyone under the bus?”
The answer to both is … um … not a negative? – and not just in my writing, either. I’d rather leave the admission of guilt at that – amorphously vague – but since some of the offenses have been splattered all over the pages of the Solution, it’s only fitting that some of the mea culpas also be shared in this venue.
Humble pie is on the menu – but at least the extra servings won’t make the scale creep up….
Not Now Is Not Never
Posted on: September 6, 2015
My grandprincesses crack me up. When dil Brooke was fixing 3½ yo Evie’s hair one morning, Brooke suggested that she could put Evie’s hair in one braid, two braids, or – and Evie broke in, “Or pony pigs!” 2-and-some-months Fiona started a story with, “In the distant past…” 1½ Rosie droppiedher meatballs into her mashed potatoes one by one, saying a gleeful, “Boom!” with each plop. When daughter Bethy made a straw paper “worm” crawl on the table of the restaurant, 3½ yo Naomi said soberly, “Mama, I would prefer that you not do that.” (For those of you not in the know how to do “worms”: hold a straw with a paper cover straight up on the table. Push the paper down so that it accordians all the way into a short stack at the bottom. Remove the straw and let the paper “worm” lie out on table. Dip the straw into some liquid and place your finger over the top to hold the liquid in the end. Carefully let one drop of liquid fall onto a fold of the worm. As the liquid absorbs, the paper fibers expand, and voila! The worm wriggles! Keep adding single drops onto dry sections of paper and it keeps moving. Congratulations! You have just taken your first step into a larger world …. Although apparently it may disturb overly imaginative 3½ year olds.)
Almost-6 yo Beverly is the Queen of Creativity – and of Drama. “Never” is one of her favorite words. She wants to complete a coloring page, but is told “No, put it away. It’s time for dinner.” Wails of anguish! “Now I’ll NEVER get it done!!!” Reading a book and Instructed to put it down and go take care of her bed? Loud lamentations! “Now I’ll NEVER get to finish it!” She’s even practicing for teenagerhood. Say, “No, you can’t watch a movie today; you watched one yesterday.” Gnashing of teeth! “You NEVER let me watch movies!” Oy.
We laugh, of course. What she views as “never” is only “not now.”
Sometimes we react to God that way when He tells us “no.” We assume “no” means “never.” Sometimes it is. Pray to have a baby, and end up with a hysterectomy, and it’s clear the “no” is “never”. But for a lot of things, maybe even most, we may not know for a long time, if before Heaven, whether a “no” is “never” or just “not now.”
Back in April, after the writers’ conference, I thought I was going to be upping my blogging game. On the whole, my life finally seemed settled into something more of a semblance of a resemblance of some kind of normal (whatever that is.) The time seemed right to “get serious” with my writing – discipline myself to write faithfully X days a week, get on Twitter and Instagram, start linking with other bloggers, the whole nine yards. I was even going to migrate this blog to a new title that sounds less like an advice column. I had a long session with a friend who runs a website (Cynthia DeWitte of http://www.thefemininereview.com) who gave me all kinds of helpful advice and encouragement. I’d certainly TALKED about taking this step for years. Time to put talk into action. I was nervous about it all, but it seemed like the thing to do.
We have a big penny – I mean a REALLY big penny – that we use for decision making. We call it our Urim and Thummim. (Casting lots is perfectly Biblical.) We use it when we are faced with a decision for which there are only two possible answers, or a yes/no, and for which we cannot arrive at a clear answer one way or the other. We pray and flip. If it’s a yes/no, then heads is always yes, tails no.
About the time of my last post, in June, as I was on the verge of actually, factually, taking action to set the above steps into motion, a funny thing happened. One day, I felt compelled to pick up that coin and pray, “Lord, I know I think I want to do this thing. I think I know You want me to do this thing. But suddenly, I’m not sure. So would You please confirm this?” I tossed the heavy metal coin into the air. Flip, spin, turn and kerplop onto the carpet. Tails.
Wait a minute! Tails? TAILS?? Tails means no. Whaddy mean “No”??? I admit, that toss threw me for a loop.
That is, at first. Once I got over my immediate reaction, I realized that I actually felt, well, relieved! As the next weeks went by, I came to admit that I wasn’t ready to give up my life as it is to make this blog a business. After years and years of stress with one thing after another – the years of raising kids, problems with our son, getting kids launched, caring for my cousin, dealing with my cousin’s son after his incarceration, caring for my mother till she died in November of last year – I am enjoying having a life. I am relishing getting to have lunch with friends that I’ve been out of touch with, and being available for them in times of need. It is a joy to get to spend time with my granddaughters. Having the freedom to do things such as going to Pullman for a week to care for our daughter after her surgery, or next week to Hawaii with my sister. Getting projects done around the house that have gone begging because of time pressures in the last few years. Much as I like the idea of doing a better blog, the truth is that, at least for now, I’m happier not putting that pressure on myself.
God’s also been showing me that although many circumstances might be considered right for doing that project now, I’m not right for doing it. In these last few months, He has been turning up the magnification so that certain character issues have been coming into focus. Some are just interesting, as in “Aha! So THAT’S why I do that.” Some of them are unpleasant, like looking at the unretouched photos for my school yearbooks. Some are plain ugly, like turning over a leaf in the garden and finding a big, flat, slimy slug. All are prompting change. Some change is coming relatively easily. Some is like doing an appendectomy with no anaesthesia.
That’s part of why I haven’t posted these last months. In addition to a lot of summer THINGS going on, I’ve had a lot of THINKS going on. I’ve started dozens of posts in my head – some have even made it to my laptop screen – yet all of them somehow have gone wandering off and gotten lost somewhere in the middle, or have split into a dozen different tracks that I couldn’t decide which to follow. I’m not used to that when I write. Words and opinions usually just pour right out. It’s definitely indicative of just how deep this introspection is going.
For the foreseeable future, the blog is staying where it is. I’m still not making any grand promise, even to myself, of how often I’m going to write. I will say I plan to try to write SHORTER posts, as I’ve realized that one mental block to doing them is that they have generally been as long as a magazine article. If I keep them shorter (as the subject allows), then it may be easier to do them more frequently. We’ll see!
No as in never? No as in not now? God’s given me no answer as yet, but it doesn’t matter. I’m sure that if or when He wants me to take that next step, He’ll give me a heads up.
the susie solution 