Articles
Writing
Writing is an enigma for me. It is both rewarding and exasperating. Like now, in order to write I must have something to write about. It is rewarding when I can sit down and my thoughts just flow freely. But when I get mush-brained and nothing I think about interests me it is extremely exasperating. No matter what I do nothing goes together. So I decided to try what my English course instructor said: just sit down and write even if we wrote nothing of substance. By so doing, it would supposedly unblock our brain. You see, she said we each have a “watcher,” or a little voice that blocks our thinking by telling us we can’t write. So we each had to learn how to work around our watcher so that we could get the assignment completed. In fact, we even had to draw and describe our watcher. Now that I have rambled and supposedly unblocked my thinking processes and worked around my watcher, what can we learn from all this?
It occurs to me that life is this way. At times there are moments when everything just comes together and everything turns out right. Then then at other times nothing works no matter what we do. For example, consider your car. We find life impossible without at least one, but we’re aggravated when they break down. Take our bills as another example. We have those occasional months when everything balances out, but then there are those months when unforeseen expenses–we call them emergencies–occur. We might think if we can just make it past this month all this will be over, then it will all be okay. But then we learn that those emergencies are now the norm, not the exception. They are really just a part of living. We also learn that, in most cases, everything always works out. We don’t know how, but it does.
Another thing we learn is the need to organize. I find myself less functional when I am unorganized. When I can plan ahead and stay ahead in my work and chores, I do much better. I learned a long time ago that I never did as well when I worked behind. So I devised several procedures to keep myself ahead. Occasionally I still fall behind, but not often. Then there are times when, no matter how much I organize, my brain is still mush. When that happens I find I need to organize some time away from the grind to recreate myself. We all ought to plan to be faithful to the Lord, yet while we all need a little time off from the press of life we should never plan time away from the Lord. Planning to live faithfully with Him is a part of living successfully. We never grow weary of serving Him. However, we often grow weary of the press of this life. We must distinguish between the two.
Then, we can learn that, no matter how brain-blocked we are or how hard our “watcher” tells us we can’t do the job, we still have to try. Isn’t that what commitment and responsibility are all about? In order for us to be dependable we can’t just show up for the job only when things are going our way, or work at the task only when our thought processes are flowing freely. We find success in working through those times. In fact, I have found that it is then I really grow, for I learned another way to work around being blocked. That is really satisfying for me. Isn’t it the same with worship and serving God? When we have worked through some trying circumstance and difficult time, we found that we were closer to Him and through much endurance we grew stronger as Christians. Isn’t that satisfying?
Well, all this rambling did not turn out to be so bad. In fact, what my professor said to do actually works. I now feel better about having done this job. Substantively it may not be much (you be the judge), but it’s life nonetheless. The moral is, stay at the task until it is accomplished. Not all our work will bring euphoric experiences. Life is lived in the trenches by slugging it out, so stay at it. Don’t give up until the work is done.
