Uninspired

I want to be a writer, one day. Just mentioning the idea of it gives me a feeling of great vulnerability. What do you do when you write? What do you write about? What will the reader need to see in front of them in order to understand what you are thinking? It is kind of frightening, really - not to mention, challenging.

For so long, I have found in myself a desire to see life and then to share the things I learn from what I see. This is what compels me to write. And lately, it seems that either I am not seeing life or I am just not sharing it with you. This blog has lacked updating for weeks now. And here I sit outside the Panera that's around the corner from my new apartment, sipping a Chai latte because it makes me feel closer to Cliff, and wondering what I could write that might flip the switch. Illumination... inspiration... motivation... something? Needless to say - it is that I am not seeing.

The spiritual climate of my life over the last month and a half points to God's meddling with this dry spell of mine. If there is one thing I have learned about the art or habit of creative expression in this season, it is that it is closely related to the condition of the heart. My heart has been shallow and restless, barely treading water and trying to just get by. God could not leave me there for long. However, He has - if only to learn, for the first time that the bits and pieces of intuitive, discerning, wise, and analytical thoughts that I try and muster up for a single piece of writing will never cut it when it comes to the purposes of His kingdom and my role in it.

I was reading through "Waking the Dead" (Eldredge) for the first time a few weeks ago and it was honestly like cutting teeth. Concepts and ideas were just beyond my grasping abilities, and yet I knew, for that reason, it was exactly what I was supposed to be reading. Along with it, I pulled out my Moleskin journal which I hadn't written in for months and tried to recapture whatever it was I felt I had lost, whether it was simply sight of or the existence of an actual thing. Every day of that week, which became almost a whole unexpected week off of work (that's another story in itself), I sat at the pool and read, hoping to live out what I felt was a very inspiring title. The beauty of that time of rest and discovery was that I felt as though each morning I could see everything a bit clearer, as though my heavy eyelids were lightening with each passing day.

I am slowly drawing nearer and nearer to the Source of all life, all thought, all truth, and all beauty. The growing fullness of my heart is finally starting again to ponder and meditate upon things I see and experience, and that's where my tendency to share comes in. An uninspired heart has lifted and is beginning to work her way back to the center, but instead of opening up, is choosing to dwell there, at least for a little while longer. Eldredge, in "Waking the Dead," references St. Bernard of Clairvaux's thoughts on what it means to "live in a way that we store up reserves in our hearts and then offer from a place of abundance" (209). I think his thoughts hold fitting imagery for my present state of being.

If you are wise, you will show yourself rather as a reservoir than as a canal. A canal spreads abroad water as it receives it, but a reservoir waits until it is filled before overflowing, and thus without loss to itself [it shares] its superabundant water.

Let me be wise, then.