The five G's of my life

It has been an interesting week full of the usual… mucking and feeding and cooking and a birthday party for farm family and choir practice and bill paying (not much cleaning)… as well as the unusual… preparing to share why and how I write with a book group of friends. All week I have been chewing my writing cud, looking for themes, considering the causes, reflecting on the reasons I write what I write and why I write at all. So here goes, my journey down memory lane, the roads taken and not taken.
My family valued reading, education, and ideas. We were comfortable with the world of words and our family games were word games…crossword puzzles, Reader’s Digest Word Power. Interestingly enough, words connected to feelings were often in short supply but the language of ideas, history, science, the Bible, literature were part of our daily lives. We had no television or telephone so our evenings were spent reading, our noses buried in a book or magazine, occasionally coming up for air or a snack cozily wrapped up in a world of our imagining.
My love of words, the power of words, the endless possibilities in words began there, in my childhood. I loved hearing my Grandma cuss. She never used the cuss words everyone else did. She invented her own. “Dog bite it!” was her favorite. My mother’s Virginia accent gave an exquisite slightly foreign flavor to her speech, especially words with “ou” in them. My father’s family had the middle Georgia twang drawl and words with a different sound. Spoken words have an audible richness that is impossible to convey in written words. I loved them all.
As an introvert who did not learn the language of feelings, I have always had difficulty speaking up unless strongly provoked. Even then, tears and chin quivers could make what I was trying to say unintelligible. Writing feelings was easy. I could take my time, be precise in description, not have to deal with an immediate response and be on the defensive. The written word allows me to soar and stumble without feeling the pressure of immediacy and face to face response.
Even so, I could not have done this in my twenties and thirties. I was not enough myself. Caught up in the loving mayhem of having and raising a family, I had precious little time for reflection between homework, soccer, piano lessons, leading retreats, breastfeeding, endless conversations beginning with the word “Why?” , church responsibilities, part time work, shopping for food, planning meals, cooking meals, cleaning up after meals… all the outward work that accompanies family. Many days were spent moving from one task to another simply trying to keep up. And for a person with ADD, that is a special challenge all by itself. Those years were years of brewing, simmering, melding the ingredients of my life into a savory stew and I now have time to stir the pot and see what floats to the surface.
I began my public writing as a spiritual exercise. My calligraphy, a source of creative joy, had dwindled, my art classes at UNCA had ended and I had no steady outlet for my need to “make all things new”. So I began a small daily journal and shared it with a few friends via e-mail. The first time I pushed the send button, my heart stopped. To put my most protected self out in the ether, to be read by friends and others, scared me to death. In the midst of a crisis, the loss of a church community that had been a central part of my life, writing helped me speak my truth. Begun in anger and grief, fueled by feelings of despair and desperation, writing gave me distance from the struggle, a perspective that was tangible. And then Cindy came, showed me how to set up a blog and there I was, out in the world of anonymous internet relationships. So I was launched as a writer.
For a year or two, with the help of another friend, I danced around the idea of publishing my work. It never happened and this week, I figured out why. My introvert self could not bear the pressure of so much exposure. My ego needs are met in other ways. Being on Oprah and a part of Oprah’s book club has never been high on my bucket list. That’s one reason. I feared my ADD self would be driven to distraction by the demands of the process and I would lose more than I would gain. That’s another reason. I am a private person in many ways. Michael says he learns more about me through my writing than any other way. My river of life lives underground and when it comes up into the light of day, it cannot stay there without drying up. The business of my writing is the development of my soul, the enrichment of my spirit and the art of worshipping the One who gave me life. Sharing what I write is another spiritual exercise that pushes me beyond my comfort level, makes me vulnerable to others and their response.
Through the years I have learned that facts, logic and reason are not my forte. That arena belongs to others like my good friends Thomas Askew and Mark Kurdys. I am a feeler, a translator of feelings, an interpreter of my experiences in life, my encounters with all that is holy and transcendent in the muck and mire of my daily living. I am a mystic who believes in science and facts and reason, who sees the limits of both knowledge and feeling, who recognizes my limits and celebrates them. I am comfortable floating in the Sea of the Great Unknown and feel no need to be anchored to anyone or anything beyond the Loving One who is my buoyancy, my unsinkableness, my everlasting portion. I write because it is one of the gifts given me and it is the tithe I owe my God. And in the act of writing, I give thanks for the five “G’s” of my life… guilt, grace, grief, gratitude and God. It is more than enough. Selah.