The thirst to rip into the new calendar year with gusto abounds! Everybody is talking about it. And whether they admit or not most are thinking about it. Some with a degree of guilt and some with excitement. Mine is a mix.
I started the month with the thought in my mind from reading a new book I was given by one of my center offspring. She came home for a long break between semesters teaching youthful outdoorsy stuff on a barrier island and toted this fav book with her. “A Million Miles In A Thousand Years” with a subtitle of editing your life was a good read for this frustrated head scratching writer.
One of the premises Donald Miller explores is the tension between writing about life and living it. I’ve been wrestling that one for …….. years.One of the authors I really admired and enjoyed as a great read “The Old Fashioned CookBook and Encyclopedia of Country Living” seemed to get so involved in writing and marketing her writing that her life fell apart. Then Carla Emery was no longer doing what she was writing so brilliantly about. Living a self sufficient lifestyle in the country with God as the center! She was traveling around,divorced and speaking about writing.
Another I admired seemed to get caught up in side issues and confused about the core beliefs she professed, Karen Mains along with hubby David seemed to drop off the map in recent years.Although their radio program and early books including their “Tales of the Kingdom” etc trilogy are definite #1 writings, and “Making Sunday Special” is tops too. I found meaty transformation in their 40 days adventure before Easter and use their Advent writings to this day.
Then more disconcerting was one who was incredibley inspiring and was revealed as a charletin who was lying his way to fame and fortune, Mike Warenke a fake ex Satanist who never the less influenced me positively as I struggled my way through my early years as an exSpiritualist and exUnitarian and into Christianity.
Troubling role models for this aspiring Christian writer who was and is pondering what a woman should do with her pen or computer and time?Evidence that God can use anyone for good whether it benefits them or not? “All things work together for good for those who believe and are called according to His purposes” which may not be me. My things I do could benefit someone else who is answering His calling,”Yes Lord,Did you call?” While I am not answering His calling anymore or not often answering or not totally answering or not often answering. I am busily being a sidetracked child of God’s involved in other things although the writing He inspired me to complete continues to influence for good.
This is not my goal!!
Then another is the struggle with how to choose what to do and write as a Christian. That’s another big one to chew off. I don’t have the answer yet and I actually think the answer keeps changing. So it’s a pleasure to see he also doesn’t have a pat answer and saw that the answer for him also was in process.
My New Year’s is beginning with a ponder on what to do and not do,think and not think, say and not say, goal or not aim at as I have a quiet home and some hours to myself. I cherish the quiet which I’m told qualifes me as an introvert. I need companionship
Great catch by my son in law at Christmas as I fill up with music and people!
which I’m told qualifies me as an extrovert. So I enter the new year as a mix and as a mongrelly type I enjoy it!
How about you?
wouldn'tyaknowit 