The Power of Words - A Manifesto

My husband says it is really quite easy. He says that I think we should all be happy and eat real food. But this needs to be longer. It needs to be 500 words.

I am a doer. I don’t just think that we should eat real food, I make sure that we do. I plant a garden and buy a greenhouse, chickens and garden equipment. I plant herbs and buy a dehydrator. The house is filled with canning jars. We go to farms to source some of our food and speak with farmers. I am dedicated to this. Why? Because putting our nourishment into the hands of a few corporations who have no interest in our health is a dangerous thing to do. I’m taking responsibility for our nourishment and the consequent health of my family. I call it ‘living outside the box’.

I also feel a responsibility to nurture the gifts which have been placed inside of us by God who lives inside all creation. We all have gifts. I am tempted to bury my gifts, because I am afraid of failure. I am afraid of confrontation. My journals and drawings stayed hidden for years in a closet, while I waited for the perfect time to begin to use my gifts. I will never be truly happy that way. The perfect time is not later but now. I was made to let my light shine. One day I dug out all my past works and began to go through them and admire them. I knew by the way giving myself the allowance and permission to enjoy my gifts made me feel, that my life would change.

Gifts will not grow and expand and be any use to anyone unless they are used and developed. Who told the great people of the past to do the things they did? Even today, people rise up to make a difference. They do what they must do to share the gifts they have been given. To help the needs they see. Lifting a burden, easing a load. Bringing joy to despair. Courage to fear and doubt. Beauty for inspiration. They do not wait for permission or acceptance. I’m encouraging you to use your gifts and to do the hard things. Read and share what others are doing and how they are growing in the use of their gifts. Find resources and (free) lessons on the internet. Share. Encourage each other. Gradually, confidence will come. Skill will form through practice, patience and diligence. Do the hard thing.

I sit in the dirt for hours on a sunny day pulling out weeds. I get up a couple of hours earlier than the sun each day, to write, pray and read. I keep my brushes wet and my inks ready, learning illustration. Doing whatever is needed to develop the gifts already given, because the world needs us. The world needs more beauty. The world needs what we have to give. No one is coming along to give me the opportunity. We have to make opportunity happen. My work is about people doing things, using words carefully chosen, taking initiative, overcoming, and integrity. 

I don’t know where my gifts will take me, or which direction they will go. Will I write many books or just the one?   Will I be a children’s book author and illustrator, with books coming out every year or will I just have the one?  Will I help others succeed?   Will I through my gifts make someone’s life better in some way?   I don’t know, but I believe in the power of words.   Spoken, written, thought.

Mining My Muse

     I didn’t get straight to writing today because I did the big ‘no-no’ and went straight to face-book. It is a big mistake to do that because I only have so much time and no more but it was great and now it is time to go do the chores and I don’t even have a hundred words written down. I will write, but it is never the same and my muse will think I am supposed to be writing later in the morning than earlier.
     I was getting up at six and writing but now I am getting up closer to seven and reading first and praying and then writing which would have been ok if I had not checked face-book first. On one note, it does feel a little bit good to have been somewhat bad. Though my badness will only hurt my writing career. It isn’t really a career but a passion.
     My writing passion needs to be a discipline just like reading the Bible first in the morning is becoming a discipline. Disciplines grow if adhered to and they tend to spill over into the rest of the day. But if you fudge on the discipline it could fail and become a whimsy. Something you do ‘when’ you feel like it and then eventually, ‘if’ you feel like it. Your life soon becomes a whimsy life which sounds romantic and all but it is really hard to get anything of any size and value accomplished in that fashion. You are relying on feelings and they may not appear and what will happen is; you will begin to manifest symptoms of a victim life. Your gift will be stifled by circumstances and not set free by discipline.
     It seems as though discipline would be more binding but it just depends on what you want to accomplish. If you don’t really want to accomplish anything then whimsy will work for you. But if you have a desire to accomplish something requiring skill and commitment then you will need discipline to get it done. Your writing will only grow in skill by regular use. You will meet with your muse at certain times and in certain manners. It will be a time and a place where you tap into the fountain of ideas, the flood of story, of talent that you alone have.
     You can not expect to be more if you are not more or you are not willing to do more or be more. You can dabble in dibbles and dobbles but you will be a dabbler. True accomplishment comes from commitment, consistency and drive, skill comes from practice and time. Getting out of bed earlier and meeting your keyboard early and giving it all you’ve got before the day starts calling you. My day is calling me now because the sun is rising and the livestock are eager to live this day to the fullest. To be let out of their coops and pens and to race to be the first one to get to the best spot for scratching and pecking. Am I so eager each day to be let out of bed to get to the best spot for mining my muse?

New Year Thing

I’m a bit down. This new year thing has gotten me down. I wasn’t sure that it would but it has. I’m burying my grief. I’m trying to cover it up. I’m hiding inside of me the truth that I bear everyday. In the daytime I keep it together for the others but in the mornings in my private time I focus on other things. I feel this weight weighing me down. Pushing me down. So I can’t be grateful. Grateful. I was going to do a gratefulness every day but I can’t. It is really hard. It’s not that I’m not grateful. I truly am. I can’t get beyond the silence. The loneliness. The living without you. I know, I know. They say you are all around me. But I just want to see you come so elegantly through the back door and stand so tall in my doorway, calling out to me with your waterfall voice. That’s what I want. I want that so badly. I want to observe your long thin fingers and see that engaging smile interested in everything I do and making plans together for spring. It’s hard that it’s going to be another year without you. It just starts coming out in my typing and I don't plan it. I was going to write gratitudes but it's not happening. I can't see you nor hear you nor feel your touch, my beautiful daughter, and it's a new year again, and it's not better, it's worse.

Freedom is Liberating

Freedom is liberating.
It’s true.
So many things don’t matter any more
since Jesus set me free.
I don’t care about the small stuff
like I used to,
I just want to love the people.
I want them to shine.
I want to help them have a good day.
Freedom is so liberating.

I am not the tail, but the head.

Deuteronomy 28:13

And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath…

Beautiful scripture.

Desire of the Lord.

His will.

We should not be beneath,

oppressed,

beaten down,

but above.

Not over others

oppressing them.

But above the place of the oppressed.

Not down

making it convenient for the oppressor,

above that.

Up

by the head,

no,

the actual head.

We are the head,

thinking,

reasoning,

learning,

leading,

kind.

Feeding our intellect.

Not smashed,

put low.

Not obedient,

mild.

Strong and leading.

The tail does not think,

but shows feeling.

The expression of the body.

The head influences health,

wealth,

character.

We are more than tails.

We are heads.

Fully aware,

responsible.

Some may want us to bow down,

living in fear

and contrition.

Not the Lord.

Not His will.

We have everything we need,

for life and god likeness.

Like gods,

creative,

we motivate,

lead.

His will.

Take it, use it.

No more tails are we

but whole.

Using our gifts,

we think.

Not joining a mindless culture,

gratifying the whims of society,

feeding the belly

with brightly colored, tasty poison.

We have knowledge.

We know what is good,

keeping our minds active, alive.

Being the head.

Thinking:

is it good for me?

Will it make me strong?

Will it be healing?

Will it be nourishing?

Questioning all,

what I eat,

where I go,

who are my friends,

what shall I learn,

how can I help,

is there more that I can be?

The will of the Lord

for us who want it.

For us who say;

I am not the tail,

but the head.

Day 5 of the 500 words 30 days: A day I will never forget.

Today’s lesson is about describing a day I will never forget. Do it as a free write in my morning pages and early. I am early, not as early as some days but it is still early and I’m alone, awake in the house. Mark is at work and Chloe is sleeping. I am thinking hard and quickly while I type for that one memorable day. I feel my mind wants to write about grief but I don’t feel ready yet. But when can I be safe to talk about these things? My life began on that day. From that moment all time became arranged by before that date or after that date. Before that day is still important. We all lived back then. We grew and struggled and loved and fought. We were sick and we got well. We had a vibrant full and precarious life back then. But that day changed it all for us since now we had to know what it was like to lose one of ourselves to cancer. It began in the early hours of the night as I lay on her, holding onto her wax like form. Something in me died as well. The pain came out of my mouth. Months and years of holding onto my emotions came out. She was as beautiful in death as she had been in life. But then here was her body finished, worn out broken and spent. Taken off and left behind like a garment. This body that I had cared for and cherished. I lay on top of her now that she was finished with it and had gone where I could not follow. Oh, how I longed to go with her. Or I could take her place and then she could continue to live and be the life of the party. Keeping her siblings in order and being the brightness in the lives of her friends. I left her there. Her husband was waiting for me to leave him alone with her. He was broken. I thought I knew a lot about things until this moment. He said he would take care of things. The others were waiting to take me home where I could sleep. For them it was over now and they were all exhausted. The trance had begun. I don’t know how to explain it but there was nothing on my inside. I was moving and talking but I was gone on the inside. Nothing could have prepared me for this just as nothing can really prepare us for the joy at new life. And it is very hard to describe the insides when you look at that little one, so fragile and so helpless yet so alive, in your arms. That ability to create a whole new human is beyond spiritual. The loss of that one no matter how many years later is unquestionably the most difficult challenge of all. Yet it isn’t a challenge. That was not the right word. It is task. No it’s not a task either. Event. Thing that happened to me. Well actually it happened to her, my beautiful daughter. But it also happened to me because a piece of me died with her. With every child born is a new creation inside of me. A new part who now loves this one and nurtures and hopes and teaches and cherishes. The physical care and the emotional care. All of it becomes a part of who I am. Like an island in the soul of Riley in the movie “Inside Out”. Each of my children are an island, a part of me. Yet not so fragile as the islands in Riley. Much more permanent than that. Each of my children have a whole section of my control room. The switchboard belongs to them. It is what connects us together. As the child grows that part of the switchboard changes and each change is painful and challenging. Then one dies. And that part of the switchboard is now silent. That silence fills my head. Fills my soul as though it were the only switchboard in the control room. All the other boards have become dim and my attention is riveted on the silence. It is as though I don’t exist. I don’t know how to walk or eat or when to sleep. How to do all the things I ever did. I turn my back to the rest of the room and wait for the silence to end. I take tons of pictures. I post them to her face book page and read and reread her emails to me. I want to set her up on the walls of my house but I’m becoming weak and my joints ache. I can’t dress properly or even take my showers. I can’t go into the store to buy food or all the other places I used to go. When I see another human my mouth opens and her life comes gushing out. How wonderful she was, how courageous, how beautiful and smart. I slept the rest of that day until late afternoon. The struggle for Debbie is over. She is safe in her eternal place. I came downstairs and the place was full of people. My children, my friends, my in-laws. Friends had come and set up a table covered with food. I could not eat. My mother came escorted by the local sheriff. My mother is in her eighties so we were concerned. I went down the driveway to see what was going on. She was in tears. She was so small and lonely looking. The sheriff had found her to deliver to her the most difficult news she had received yet. My father died that day in New York. In a car accident not his fault. He had been hit when a car did not stop at a stop sign. He was going home to Canada. He was in his eighties. He had brought her to the airport in New York so that she could be here with me. The details pressed into my head but the room was taken up with the silence and I had no room for more. But my mother needed me. My brother, who was with us, and I helped my mother make arrangements and get on a plane to go back to her home where my sister is. She looked at me before she left. I knew it would be the last time I would see her. “I have to bury my daughter,” I said. “You have to go and take care of Dad.” She wanted to stay but knew that she had to go. And so the darkness settled in over me. The darkness of taking care of the things in front of me while the inside is completely silent. This darkness settled in. Yet, after nearly five years the light has begun to shine again for me. I am writing my way through. Finding healing in the little things.

Gratitude - 7 My Writing Teachers

I'm grateful for my writing teachers.  No, I'm not in school, although at times it seems so.  I still have teachers.  Teachers are those who instruct me whether they know it or not.  I have taken online college courses and may consider that again someday, but for now my training is informal to say it best.  There is Kristi Holl and her emails and blog posts and the work she does with the Institute of Children's Literature.  There is Preslaysa Williams whom I follow on her blog and face book page.  Then there is Jeff Goins who provides so much that you have to choose by priority.  There are numerous authors on face-book and blogs.  There are community events and author meets locally.  Not to mention actual books to read.  All of these hold the standard high for me.  Then there are my dear friends and family who tirelessly boost my self-esteem.  My writing group is right in there as well.  Where would I be without all these teachers?  Just today I read about the attitude of an apprentice being that of humility, the hard work of the journeyman and the high standards of the Masters.  Then I read another article about the balance between contentment with where I'm at and striving to grow.  This all leads me to say that I'm grateful for my writing teachers and that it can only go up from here.  It doesn't matter that I have so little formal education now because in the world we live in we have access to as many teachers as we want as long as we have the desire to learn.  So for now I am content in the position of apprentice and I'm grateful for all those who give so much to my instruction.