ok, you can all breathe a sigh of relief {Part 2 of our stray dog dilemma}

So, all 100 of you (!) who read yesterday’s post and gasped in horror can breathe a big collective sigh of relief:

I climbed down into the manhole this morning, at 6:30am, to rescue that poor shivering pup.

Yes, I did.  I got soaking wet, since there was a pump down there spraying water, but wet jeans were nothing compared to how miserable the dog looked.  My main fear was that he (she? I haven’t gotten a good look yet) would snap at my feet as I came down the ladder, but nary a whimper.  Not a single peep.  He just laid back his ears and looked up at me.  

I may or may not have said, in a rather loud voice, while gingerly climbing backwards down the ladder of a manhole in Post-Soviet Central Asia, “Jesus, I cannot believe you did this for us.  And now I’m doing it for a dog!”

Wearing cloth gloves, I picked up the dog and carried him awkwardly back up the ladder with me, talking to him all the time, and we reached ground level in safety.  I wrapped him in an old towel I’d brought with me, carried him the 10 meters back to our gate, and deposited him gently in the big old doghouse just inside our yard.  

(The owners of this house used to keep a huge, ferocious, terrifying Rottweiler to discourage break-ins.  The entire street, especially the kids, used to be terrified to even walk past this house.  It’s a good thing we’re the last house on the street.)

Yes, we have lived in this house with a ready-made dog kennel for three years and don’t yet own a dog… But here I need to say a brief word about me and animals: The largest pet I’ve ever owned is a hamster, and while I was sad when I found poor Clyde stiff and cold in his cage, and shed a few tears as I buried in the backyard with a popsicle-stick cross, I have to say that losing Clyde did not break my heart. 

I did not grow up on a farm like my husband, who laughed at me on one of our early dates for meticulously avoiding piles of animal poop as we walked down a rural dirt road.  “It’s poop!” I exclaimed.  “I don’t want to step in it!”

“Yeah, but it’s just animal poop - all they eat is grass,” he reasoned.  “Now human poop, or dog poop - that’s a lot worse.”

And now, I have a real, live dog temporarily living in my yard.  (I say temporarily because I really have no idea what’s going to happen next.) 

I have zero practice feeding dogs, interpreting their body language (ok, most of it’s pretty common sense), dealing with things like fleas and worms and vaccinations, and especially no practice dealing with any of that in a barely-one-step-up-from-a-third-world country.  

So you could say I’m pretty overwhelmed by the whole situation.  Granted, so far the first day has gone relatively peacefully - no snapping or growling when we’ve fed him/her, and even some feeble attempts to show it wants to please.

By far the best moment so far, however, was my conversation with the scrawny little neighbor boy who spends half the day at our house almost every day (who’s actually here with me right now on the front steps as I type this, telling me a story lickety-split about a dog they had once who they fed and fed until it got really big, and then someone stole it, or it went into someone else’s yard and they never saw it again…)  

This little boy turned up at our gate around 8am this morning, and when we showed him the dog in the kennel he asked if it had snuck back into our yard.  (He’d helped fill in the hole with rocks yesterday but missed the drama with the manhole in the afternoon.)  

“No,” I said, “the dog got thrown down the manhole (didn’t know that word, had to pantomime) over there.  I couldn’t stand the thought of it being in there, so I climbed down this morning and…” I hesitated, trying to think of the right word.  Suddenly it popped into my head: 

“Man uni kutkuzivaldim.”  

(Literally: I managed to cause it to be saved.)  

It’s exactly same word we use when describing what Jesus did for us. 

(Okay, go ahead and get all teary now.  It is just a dog, remember, not a person; I have a whole other post brewing about that topic… watch this space!)

P.S. The kids have done really well with the whole thing.  William looked relieved this morning at breakfast when I announced I'd retrieved the dog out of the manhole.  "It just wasn't right," I said, and he nodded.  "I TOLD those boys not to throw it down there, but they didn't listen to me," he said.  All three kids helped me bring it food and water, and have checked back in periodically all day to see how it's doing.  So... object lesson in progress!

a stray dog and a moral dilemma

{I was going to post about something completely different today, but this is what's been happening at our house the last couple days... A disclaimer: It's been brought to my attention that some of the content in this post may be disturbing to those of you living in more developed countries than the one we're in... YES I am still grappling with this, and YES I hate that this happened, and NO I do not want to see it happen again.  There is no humane way to deal with stray or unwanted animals in this culture, nor are there any organizations in our town to deal with this kind of problem - if I suggested that, or told people what we have in America, I'd be laughed at incredulously.  So keep that in mind as you read... and yes, I do want your honest opinions.}

(Will's dog he used to sleep with at night, hung up to dry...)

Two nights ago, a stray dog snuck into our yard.  It spent the night curled snugly in the mesh seat of Ruby’s umbrella stroller, where James found it in the morning when he went outside to check on his cherry seedlings.  

It’s a scrawny scrap of a thing, gray and mangy, hardly more than a puppy, and it had a pointed little face and two of the saddest eyes you’ve ever seen.  

I tried not to look at those eyes while we resolutely shooed it out of the yard three times that first day.  Then it snuck back in overnight.  

James didn't have time to deal with the dog in the yard before work, and sitting at the breakfast table this morning, after James had left and the kids had been excused, I had a fight with my conscience thinking about that mangy dog.  I was afraid of worms and fleas and a mysterious dog diseases… I didn’t see any signs of rabies, but then, you never know - can rabies be dormant?  

Despite all that, my conscience is still niggling, because after watching yesterday’s drama with getting the dog out of the yard, Ruby said this morning at breakfast, very clearly, “Do-k.  B-ed (bread) -kiss, kiss- “ because that was the noise we were making to call it out from under its hiding place.  Was she wanting to cuddle the dog?  Get rid of it?  Was she scared of it?  Maybe all of the above, but she sure wasn’t missing any of what was happening.

And then, this morning, as we stood on the steps and watched James trying in vain to lure the dog out from under the petrol tank before leaving for work, Will said, “Mom, it’s just like Giovanni, right?”  

(Giovanni being a pathetic orphan character in a Five In A Row book we read this year who begs his bread and sleeps in doorways.)  

Great.  My six-year-old is comparing this mangy mutt to a human orphan, implying we should give it bread and a bed to sleep in - and isn’t that what the Bible says to do, too?  Good grief!

My conscience was more conflicted about this than I felt it ought to be.  I begrudged the mental energy spent worrying about what I should do, and resented the “mangy mutt" for taking up valuable brain time.  And then, at other, more grace-filled moments, I contemplated feeding it, de-worming it, giving it a bath for fleas, and saw grand visions of gospel grace being enacted in front of my kids - a story they’d remember for the rest of their lives.  

“Remember how mom didn’t just throw that awful puppy out on the street, but spent hours looking after it, and it became our favorite pet??”

I have a friend who wouldn’t have thought twice about adopting this dog.  She sees it as part of her mission in life to redeem stray animals.  They’d only been living in this country a few months and had already added two dogs and two cats to their household, at least one of which had been picked up off the street, spur of the moment.  

For her, there would have been no agony of indecision, just, “This is what God wants me to do, show compassion,” and the dog would’ve been in her arms.  Aaahh!  Compared to her, I feel like a grace-less, compassion-less person.  (She would disagree - she would probably say we just show grace in different ways.)

Ok, so then why is this way of showing grace so hard for me?  Is it because of the cost?  The personal cost to myself?  I would have to give up hours of precious time, and money, trekking all around town in a taxi looking for the right medicine, and then administering it in ways I can’t begin to imagine.  (I grew up in a family with no pets larger than a hamster, so you can see why I'm squeamish…)

Maybe it’s just selfishness.  Maybe it’s that showing grace to this mutt would require too much breaking of my routine, too much upheaval, too much time and sacrifice, and I'm just selfish and I don’t want to give up control of my life, especially for a measly dog.  Now, if it were a real baby left on my doorstep, that would be different… 

I call James in an agony of indecision, but he doesn’t have the brain-space at the moment to even contemplate the problem.  His response is pragmatic: “Well, keep it if you want to, but I grew up on a farm having to dispose of litters of puppies which we couldn’t feed and couldn’t sell… I’m afraid I can be pretty matter-of-fact about these sorts of things…”  

Reason intrudes, and I realize the dog could possibly bite one of the kids, or worse, and I truly don’t know what kinds of diseases it has.  I’m pretty sure they don’t sell worm medicine or flea powder in our puny town, and I don’t have the means or the time or enough Russian to go hunting around the bigger town 15 minutes down the road for medicine for a stray… 

So now I flop to the other extreme and decide it’s the most disgusting creature I’ve ever laid eyes on, and we have to get rid of it as soon as humanly possible.  

The dog is somehow getting into our yard, so when my helper arrives I enlist her in hunting for the hole, and we find it outside our fence and stop it up with huge rocks.  She dons a pair of old gardening gloves and a scrap of bread, and I grab a big stick, and we shoo the dog out from under the huge petrol tank in our yard which the boys use as a pirate ship.  It had quickly become his favorite hiding place since the tank’s belly hangs very low to the ground; he must’ve felt safe underneath.  

He yips and whines pathetically (Ruby and the boys watching the whole time - can’t get them to go inside!) as my helper and a neighbor boy carry him several hundred yards down the canal and turn him loose (notice how I wriggled out of actually getting my hands dirty).  

My heart cringes at his whines, but I harden it successfully and we all high-tail it back to our yard and shut the gate.  

He comes back, of course, and skulks around outside our fence for a few hours, but I figure as long as he can’t get through the hole he’ll eventually look elsewhere for food.

Then, a few hours later, after a bike ride, the boys accidentally leave the gate open.  Like a flash, the dog takes his chance and darts back into the yard and under his favorite hiding place.  

Now I was just plain mad.  

I had to leave him there, reluctantly, while I made lunch and fed the kids, but after lunch I immediately enlisted a gang of neighbor boys who appeared at our gate wanting to play.  

We re-enacted this morning’s scene: me pushing the dog out from under the tank with a stick, and a bigger boy donning the gloves and grabbing him, yelping, on the other side.  You would have thought we were tearing his legs off, the noise he made.  

Ruby, watching, was very distressed, and kept whimpering, “Do-k!  Do-k! B-ed!”  

As in, “That’s a real live animal making that sound and all it wants is some food!”  

I swing her up to my hip and tell the neighbor kids to take it far, far away.  Well, they’re back in two seconds, and when I asked them where they threw it, they point at an empty manhole 20 yards away which - I thought - leads to the main water pipe for our town!  

I freak out, envisioning a rotting dog contaminating the whole town’s water supply, and race towards the manhole with Ruby bouncing on my hip.  The cover is off and a long tree branch has been stuck in it; the bottom is full of rubbish already.  

I see all this while the boys eagerly inform me this manhole was for the old system of water pipes which had recently been turned off.  I find this information dizzying, since I’d seen a crew with my own eyes installing that manhole just last summer (so how could it be old?) and I was pretty sure I’d heard water flowing under through it on one of my recent morning runs...

But there's the tree branch and rubbish to prove their story, and I’m in such a rush to get rid of that awful dog, I nod and say, “All right then,” and we all troop back to our gate.

And now it’s the afternoon, and I’m sitting here writing this, thinking about horrible empty cisterns and a helpless puppy who’s never really done anything to me, except whine and look pathetic… and the fact that even throughout this whole post I’ve picked words like “mangy mutt” and “skulk” to describe him.  I’m trying to imagine if I’d feel any different about him if I’d used words like “poor little thing” and “thin, starving, helpless”.  

I’m thinking about grace, and how hard it is to give and receive.  

I'm thinking about the fact that Ruby woke up from her nap sobbing her eyes out, and when I went into her room she was sitting in a corner of her crib, crying, “Do-k!  Do-k!” over and over.  I was sure she’d had a nightmare about that ridiculous dog, and I don't know if it was because she was afraid of the dog, or just sad and traumatized by the awful yelps it made as it was dragged out? 

Have I scarred my child for life?  I think miserably, as I lay down on our bed with her and make soothing noises while I stroke her arms.  She’s soon fast asleep again, limbs splayed out, flushed cheeks, sweaty hair plastered to her forehead.  I look at her sweetness, and… 

I still don’t know if I did the right thing.  Ok, I probably didn't.  Feeling worse about it all the time...

Now, at 9:30pm, after hearing her say “Do-k?  Do-k?” twice at dinner (to Daddy), twice more during her bath, again during teeth-brushing, again during story reading (every story we picked seemed to have a dog in it somewhere!) - each time accompanied with a squinched-up face and arms clutched to her chest, whether in sympathetic pain or a mother-cuddle-instinct, I couldn’t tell - 

I finally decide she is definitely getting a complex, and pray accordingly:

“Dear Jesus, please give Ruby peace about the dog.  Please help her know You’re looking after it (in the cruel cistern!).  Please don’t let her have any bad dreams tonight (about her mother’s abuse of stray animals!), and please help her not to think about the dog anymore!”  

She quieted down and laid calmly in her bed, but I'm wondering how many more days of “Do-k?  Do-k?” I will have to endure before she forgets about it?  

Maybe never?  

If you were me, how would you teach your children that God values all life in a context where life is so undervalued?

P.S. Tomorrow I plan to have a heart-to-heart with my boys, and discuss the fact that it's a terrible thing to be mean to anything God has made, and that God of course doesn't like it... and that maybe we can keep some supplies on hand at our house in case this kind of situation happens again.... any other suggestions?

P.P.S. I've found myself wishing whole-heartedly that we lived near a really good vet, so I could have just scooped that dog into the car and gotten it de-wormed and vaccinated, and we probably would've kept it.  There's just no such thing in these parts, which is what makes this whole thing so difficult.

P.P.P.S.  In case you're wondering, I did NOT sanction those boys to throw that dog down into that cistern, and after they did it, I felt even sicker - but I just had no idea what to do.  I still don't.

of Sparkly Green Earrings, and grace for recovering perfectionists

Photo credit: William Broughton, age 6

I hate nits.  

I’ve had them one time, and that was one time too many.  

So, just now, I shuddered appreciatively and indulged in an empathetic skin-crawl while reading the chapter called “Nitpicking” in Melanie Shankle’s honest, hilarious book on motherhood, Sparkly Green Earrings.  

Yesterday at nap time I raced through the first 10 chapters, foregoing my doze to gobble up just one more - and then one more - hilarious anecdote about sleep deprivation, potty training, and projectile vomiting.

But in Chapter 17, I found the gem of the book, for me.  The nugget of truth worth the price of the book.  The pearl of wisdom which made me stop in my tracks, switch off my Kindle, lay it on the bedside table, close my eyes, snuggle deep under my blanket, and pray, 

Lord, this is me.  This is SO me.  Help!

Here’s how Melanie ends Chapter 17:

“I think I’d been living under the illusion that I could give Caroline a perfect childhood.  But perfect doesn’t exist in our world. (Oh, how I wish it did!) 

“I can give her love, I can give her laughter, I can instill values and morals in her, I can teach her about Jesus and how he loves her more than she knows, and I can hopefully give her more good memories than bad.

“And I can pick the nits out of her hair, one little larva at a time.

“But I can’t give her perfection, because I’m fresh out. 

“That’s where the grace of God enters, and I exit quietly through the back door, allowing him to fill in the gaps.”

-Melanie Shankle, Sparkly Green Earrings (emphasis mine)

That’s Melanie.  Straight up.  No beating around the bush.  Gut level.  

“I can’t give her perfection, because I’m fresh out.” 

Wham.

Reading those words felt like a punch in the stomach, and also at the same time like a burden lifting off.  

Yes.  That is totally true of me, I thought.  Bravely, I might add.  (For a recovering perfectionist, that’s a big admission.) 

I am fresh out of perfection, much as I try desperately to pretend otherwise every. single. day.  

Whew!  Who needs to try anymore?  I’m done.  I’m done pretending to be perfect, because everyone - including me - knows it’s a big sham.  

And then that beautiful image, the one that had me crawling under my blanket with my eyes closed to savor the comfort:

“That’s where the grace of God enters and I exit quietly through the back door, allowing him to fill in the gaps.”

Yes.  

YES.  

The relief of that picture, an invitation to let go of my striving to be the perfect mother, and just quietly slip out the back door. 

The delightful, dependable ability of God to fill in all the gaps - everything I’ve left undone, all my mistakes, all the things I agonize over not being able to give my children.  

So thank you, Melanie, for putting it all out there, and for expressing truths we all feel but sometimes can’t quite wrap words around.  

And Lord…

Please give me grace, every day, to accept the reality of my limitations.  Help me learn how to rejoice in them, even though right now they make me cringe!

Free me from pride and the desperate need to measure up, so I can live joyfully in your strength, not mine.  

And please fill in all the gaps for my kids, so they learn how to rely on you, too.  

of carpets and broken hearts {a Good Friday story}

Today I heard a story that broke my heart.  

We were outside washing carpets, my new helper and I.  With overturned tea bowls, we scrubbed circles in soapy lather, shoving the warp and woof this way and that, collecting clots of hair and fuzz.  Brown water and soapsuds ran in rivulets down the driveway.  

This was her first week of work; the neighbor who’s been helping me for two years recently found out she’s pregnant with their fourth baby.  This new girl, Mikayla, the wife of one of James’ workers, is kind, cheerful, energetic - a perfect and timely answer to prayer.  She arrived just in time for spring cleaning, and we had been waiting all week for a warm day to tackle the carpets.  

  

We squatted on our haunches in the driveway, scrubbing away, our backs warmed by the spring sunshine, and she told me her story.  

I knew she had a two-year-old son at home, so I asked, innocently, if they wanted to have any more.  

“Not yet,” she said, sprinkling more soap on the carpet.  

“The doctor told us we should wait two years, and then we can try again.”  There was something I wasn’t understanding.  

“When my son was a year old, I got pregnant again,” she explained.  They underwent the usual three ultrasounds throughout the pregnancy, but it wasn’t until the last one that the doctor noticed anything unusual.  

“The doctor told us the baby’s head was too big,” she said. She pushed the broom in long strokes across the carpet, squeezing off excess water.  “He told us it would be born deformed.  That it would be very hard on us, and on the baby.  He said we should consider aborting.” 

When I finally understood this last sentence, I stopped scrubbing and jerked my head up to look at her, my eyes widening.  

“Really?  He said that?”

She nodded, still scrubbing.  

“What did you do?”

“I cried, and said, ‘No, no, I won’t do it, I’ll have the baby, I want to keep it.”  Her arm moved in rhythmic circles.  “But then I went home, and my mom talked with me, and she said it would be really hard on me later and that I should do it, and my husband wanted to do it too… what choice did I have?”  

“You were eight months pregnant already.”  She nodded.  I’m in disbelief.  I’ve never heard of a doctor recommending an abortion that late.  I want to ask whether they had tests done, whether they got a second opinion… 

“So what happened?”  I already know I don’t want to hear the answer.

“They gave me some medicine.  And then - the baby stopped - moving.”  There are queer little stops in her voice.  She manages to get the sentence out, but only just.  There’s a long, heavy pause.  A huge hand is squeezing my heart.  “I was in the hospital for ten days, and I cried every day.”

I’m crying now, too, my face crumpled up, the tears running down.  Around and around go the tea bowls, upside down, all these rivulets of dirty water running off.  I’m silently screaming at God. This is upside down!  This is backwards!  This should never happen!  Why, God?  Why?

People here don’t like to display emotion, and my tears are embarrassing her, but she doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if they are validating her too. 

Out loud, I say, vehemently, “That doctor put himself in the place of God.  He decided your baby shouldn’t have the chance to live.  That is God’s decision, not a person’s.”  

“Yes. I know.”  She agrees.  She scrubs another minute in silence.  “But what could I do?  Everyone was telling me it was the only thing to do, and I believed them.”  

There’s a long pause.  She stands up and reaches for the hose to flood the dirty water off the carpet.  I want a hose that will flood her bleeding heart with grace.

“So… did you have the baby?”  I almost can’t bring myself to ask.

“Yes.  They wanted to give me a caesarean but my mom went to bat for me and convinced them to let me deliver naturally.  It only took me 4 hours.”  

And then?  And then what?  I simply cannot imagine the pain of knowingly delivering a dead child.  “And then… you… said goodbye?”  Now I’m the one who can hardly get the words out.  It’s hard enough just to breathe.

She nods, silently.  Water pours from the hose, washing away all the grime.

“I’m sorry,” I say, vigorously wiping my eyes on my sleeve.  “You probably don’t want to think about this or talk about it… I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, you don’t want to think about it, but of course, you do…”

A minute later, I find a way to encourage her, even just a little.  “At least you know he’s in heaven, with God, and he’s perfect.  He’s playing, and laughing, and happy…”

She nods again, meeting my eyes.  “I had a dream that my grandmother, who’s dead, came and patted me on the shoulder one night while I was crying, and said, ‘It’s ok, he’s with me, we’re looking after him.’”

Internally I’m having all sorts of theological difficulties (I have no idea whether her grandmother was a believer or not), but I don’t mention any of them… I just nod, and sniff.  

“We’re going to give his one-year nazir (memorial service) this year…. 

“A way to remember him,” I say.

“Yes.”

We’re almost done with the last two carpets.  I take Ruby inside to change her wet clothes.  I pay Mikayla her first week’s wages, wishing I could give her the Gift without price that will soothe and save her wounded soul.  Please, Lord, I beg.  Please, one day soon.

I see our Easter mountain in the kitchen window, the cross tilting lopsidedly on the top.  Good Friday floods over me afresh.  It had slipped my mind while we were outside scrubbing. 

Into my mind floods a vivid memory of walking through the Good Friday story this morning with the kids, and how Ben had to get the hammer so I could tap the nails through Jesus’ pierced wrist into the little apple-twig cross.  The boys went perfectly quiet while I did it, except for Ben saying mournfully, “I don’t like this part, Mommy.”  Will’s eyes were wet.

My stomach twists, remembering. What you had to go through for us, Jesus!  The brokenness you endured, so you could heal ours.

The empty cross is dark against the window.  The women are weeping as they leave the tomb. 

It’s Good Friday.  And my heart is breaking.

But.  Sunday is coming.  There is hope.  Hope for all the brokenness.  

And suddenly, I’m flooded with a rush of gratefulness: that we ourselves were broken, but are being healed.  And that we get to live here, in this broken place, next to broken people, with Sunday’s healing hope inside our broken hearts.  

what listening is not {One Word: listen}

{Each month this year I'm posting on my One Word for 2014: listen.  Here's my latest epiphany, from the month of March... To read the rest of the posts in this series, click here.}

I have, happily, discovered something listening is not.

Listening is not just keeping quiet. 

For a long time, I thought to be a good listener meant I had to sit through the whole conversation and bite my tongue, and not say all of the (to me) immensely interesting things popping into my head, which is incredibly hard for me to do.  I love talking, and I’m far too fascinated by myself and my own thoughts, so for me to hold back all the nuggets of wisdom and personal anecdotes which clamor to be shared feels like torture.

But actually, to be a good listener I am allowed to speak: in fact, if I don’t say anything, the other person won’t actually feel heard!  It’s what I say, though, that’s important.  If I truly want to listen, and to have the other person feel I am listening, my responses must:

be about them, not me;

reflect back to them the feelings I am hearing.  

One of the most valuable things a good listener can do for a person is to validate their feelings.  Not just pat them on the head and say, “Yes, yes, dear, I understand”, but really and truly enter into their world and feel with them, and then let them know it.  Let them know you care deeply about how they are feeling, they aren’t crazy for feeling that way, they are a normal, red-blooded human being, and that you would feel the same way if you were in their shoes.

If I manage to convey this, the person I am listening to will feel heard, and not just heard - validated.  Loved.  Accepted.  Comforted.  Immensely relieved.  Just knowing another human being is standing with you in whatever it is you are going through is tremendously comforting.  And sometimes - most of the time, actually - just the standing-with is enough.  

Answers aren’t even needed.  

on writing and other peculiar habits...

{Linking up again this weekend with the ladies over at the Velvet Ashes Grove, writing about... well, writing!}

Picture a little girl perching on a wooden stool at a low table, head bent over a small piece of paper on her placemat.  She grips a purple marker tightly in her chubby fist, poking the tip of her tongue out in concentration.  Finally, she heaves a sigh of satisfaction.  

“Look, Mommy!” she jumps up and runs to the kitchen table, waving her scrap of paper. “I filled it all up!”

Her mom takes the scrap of paper and looks at it.  From top to bottom, every inch of white is completely covered with wobbly rows of tiny little scribbles.

“See, Mommy?” the little girl says proudly.  “I’m writing!”    

One guess who the little girl is.  

Yep.

My Mom still has the paper.  

My own little writer...

I remember sitting next to my Mom at the kitchen table, resting my chin on the tablecloth, watching her left hand move gracefully across the paper forming magical connected letters called “cursive”.  I would watch for a while, then I’d get a bit of paper from the basket by the phone and sit down at my little table to practice.  

I filled up reams of paper scraps with my “writing”.  I loved the feel of the marker or pencil or pen in my hand, the sliding, curvy motion as the tip curled across the paper, the look of the ink as it unwound itself in knots and loops and dips and dots.  I loved the tidy straight rows of inked shapes, one row under another, marching down the page.  It didn’t matter to me one bit they weren’t real words.  

I was writing.  

I remember sitting bored at my desk in front of my homeschool Saxon Math book (it was a good book - I just detested math), gazing across our postage stamp lawn at the huge scarlet-leafed maple tree.  Guiltily latching my bedroom door, I would slide Saxon aside and write a poem instead.  

In Jr. High, a friend and I wrote almost a whole novel together.  It was to be the first of a trilogy; we unashamedly plagiarized J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.  The heroine was a combination of the two of us, and the hero was modeled after a boy we both liked in youth group.  To our credit, we did create a completely original race of beings called “the Gargoilim”, but our “Nolbids” (Hobbits) and Elves were pretty much all J.R.R..  

I wasn’t good at making the plot exciting, so my friend would write the gist in outline form and pass the floppy disk to me on Sundays, and I would embellish to my heart’s content all week.  I was really good at embellishing.  Then she would take the finished pages back and draw beautiful, detailed illustrations with colored pencils.  We were completely absorbed in our project, and completely happy.  We wrote for the fun of writing and created for the joy of creating.

In the years since then, I have journaled.  And journaled.  And journaled.  Boxes of journals crammed with my handwriting are living in storage all around the world - my parents’ house in Sonoma, my mother-in-law’s shed in New Zealand, my desk drawers here in Central Asia.  Every era of my life is chronicled.  In detail.  If one of my great-grandchildren decides to write my biography, they’ll be in researcher’s heaven.    

Obviously, I can’t stop writing even if I wanted to.  In an earlier post I said if I was ever kept in solitary confinement, I’d write with my fingernails on my jail cell wall.  

It’s an addiction.

It was a couple years after college that I started asking myself, why?  Why do I feel this irresistible compulsion to move pen across paper, even if no one ever reads it?  

I remember sitting in an upstairs room in a little guest house during my first year overseas on a holiday with three girls from my English-teaching team.  We were enjoying the quaint touristy Asian town, and I was trying to process something - I can’t remember what.  (I was always processing something.)  That afternoon each of my roommates was occupied, and no one was really in the mood to listen to me think out loud, so I sat there on the bed and tried to do it by myself.  

I decided to think an entire train of thought in my mind beginning to end, without saying anything out loud or writing anything down.    

I couldn’t do it.  

I nearly drove myself crazy!  

I actually got scared.  What kind of person was I who couldn’t hold a coherent string of thoughts inside my head - was my brain a sieve?  Why was it evidently essential for me to use some external crutch - a pen, someone’s ear - to reach a mental conclusion?

Since those days, I’ve become intimately acquainted with the term “external processor”, and this perpetual urge I have to put words on paper or debrief with a friend in order to reach a conclusion has been partially explained.  (Whew!)

But aside from using words for compulsive external processing, I’ve had a life-long love affair with words themselves.  I always read them voraciously, thrilled to their savor and their power, and avidly put pen to paper to form them myself.

A peek at my ever-messy kitchen desk, where I do most of my writing -
complete with candy wrappers, old rubber band and TP...

“I write.”  That’s easy to say.  That can mean journals nobody sees.

“I’m a writer.”  Whew.  That’s a lot harder.  Somehow saying “I’m a writer” seems to ask a lot more of me and feels more intimidating than saying “I write”.

I’m still in the process of realizing and embracing the fact that the second statement is actually the same as the first.  If I write, I'm a writer.

I haven’t published one single article, anywhere, even online.  I haven’t even guest-posted for anyone.  Ever.  

So how can I call myself “a writer”, you ask?  

Because I write.  Every day.  Because I can’t not write.  It’s just something I have to do.  

"I’m a writer."  It’s starting to feel really good to say that out loud.

So… here comes the crunch, the part of this post where I get really honest:

Recently I’ve been feeling differently about this writing thing of mine… I want to Make Something with all this writing.  

I started my blog when my first son was born, mostly for my Mom (and other dedicated, wonderfully loyal friends) to read stories and see pictures of our kids and our overseas life.  But gradually, over my six-year blog life thus far, I’ve started to think almost as much about writing books as I do about reading them.

I do not have a big announcement to make (as in, watch out, world - here comes the next NY TImes best-selling author!).

But I do have Heather Seller’s inspiring book Chapter after Chapter: Discover the dedication and focus you need to write the book of your dreams living on my nightstand.  

I do not know what the future holds.

But I do dream of {gulp!} writing a book of my own someday… (I’m saying it out loud.  On the internet.  There’s no going back.)

I want to Make Something with all this writing, something more concise, profound and useful than stacks of journals hidden away in boxes.  

But since I’m not to the book-writing stage - yet - for right now, the Something I’m Making with words today is... (drumroll please) 

...this post.  For you. :)

And here’s what I want you to hear today:

Whatever “weird” (in the most flattering sense, of course) or insatiable habits you may have, pay attention to them.  Why do you feel the need to do them?  What is in you that isn’t in anyone else?

What is it that only you can do?  

Kenneth Atchity in his book Write Time (recommended by the ever-wise Heather Sellers) advises, 

“Stop doing things no one needs to do.  

Stop doing things someone else will do if you stop doing them.  

Stop doing things that aren’t the kind only you can do.  

Start doing the things you want to do, the things only YOU can do.”

Get the picture? 

Maybe the reason I can’t stop writing is because I need to keep writing.  Maybe there’s something God’s put in me to say, and all this writing is practice for letting it out one day.  

Maybe the thing we can’t stop doing is what we’re made to do, and we could stop putting it under lock and key and saying we don’t have time, and just let it out to breathe a little.  

Emily P. Freeman, in her lovely and inspiring book A Million Little Ways: Uncovering the Art You Were Made To Live, says, “Being an artist has something to do with being brave enough to move toward what makes you come alive.”

She goes on to say, “God is on the move.  But he is not invisible.  As long as there are people on earth, the world will have glimpses of God.  He chooses us to move through.  He chooses your personality, your spunk, your passion, your strengths, and your weaknesses to work in and through and with.  Christ still moves around in the world through the filter of your you-ness.”

My me-ness definitely includes writing.  Writing helps me process life.  I think better when I write.  I love better, calm down, and see clearer when I write.  

I can’t not write.

What is it you can’t stop doing?  

Maybe that’s the thing you were meant to do - the art you were made to live.

Be brave.  Write.  Create.  Be you.