SHADOWLANDS

I love this blog. There. I said it. I love writing, so I guess the natural transition would be to blog. Although, when I graduated from college with a journalism degree back in {muffled sounds}, I had no idea what blogging meant. In fact, if someone would have asked me back then, "Do you have a blog?" I would have no doubt thought they were talking about some character from the movie Gremlins. Blog. What's that? Well, here I am {muffled sounds} years later, and I love this thing called blogging. I like reading blogs of friends and family and seeing how creative they are in communicating the day to day of their life experiences. With millions of us blogging, I guess I'm not alone. Yet back in the day, I would have hardly called this hard-core journalism. I mean I was going to be a real writer. And not just any writer, a writer with moxie. A writer for Time or Newsweek. And after building a reputation for my work in news journalism, I was planning on traveling the world. Opening the doors to unknown cultures and uncovering forgotten peoples by revealing in epic tones the way mysterious rituals where time seems to stand still are not that far away from the rush of any suburbanite area while sprinkling in reminders that we are all in the end part of the human race wanting to love and be loved. Yes, I was going to write for National Geographic. I was going to have an adventure. No scratch that. My life was going to be an adventure! Just like the kind I saw in the movies. 


Whether it was my love affair with Robert Redford that caused me to watch All The President's Men over and over again, or my romantic ideas about being that kind of journalist who threw caution to the wind and went after a story risking life to uncover the truth while never wavering from the hard fought convictions that ever story is worth telling, the one thing I knew in my heart is that I was born to write. Outing the truth in a blaze of glory while the presses ran headlines that read, "Breaking News" filled me with excitement and intrigue. I knew in my heart that every conversation was on the record and that it was just a matter of making sure to ask the right questions to delve deep enough and then get the clinching quote positioned write in the article. Should it run at the top, be buried in the middle, or leave the reader hanging on until the end? My professors would tell me time and time again to stop burying my lead, but there was just something in me that wanted to entice my readers. I spent hours crafting words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs, and I wanted to somehow make sure every morsel was digested before allowing the reader the satisfaction of knowing my purpose. I didn't want them to turn the page. I wanted them to soak in it. After all, if you could get all the news you needed in the first paragraph, then why print the rest anyway? I mean just save the ink and the trees while you're at it.


Sound bites. That's what the news has come too. Sound bites are everywhere. The radio, the news, the papers, the magazines. Why we even have a sound bite for our own lives: Twitter. Capturing all the news in less words. We are a society that disdains effort. We want now. We don't want to wait for it. I realize now that my style of writing doesn't fit anymore. My thumbs couldn't possibly work fast enough to text this post. I don't have a sound bite heart. My heart runs deeply, and my thoughts explode on the page with effort. I love the effort of writing. Today's news is all about the effort of editing. So maybe that's why I like to blog. My life doesn't have to be truncated to fit some perfectly planned layout spread. I love to inspire, to encourage, but mostly to point people to Jesus. He's the reason I was created. This weekend our pastor challenged us to find our calling: what we are passionate about and then do it. For most of my life, I've known my calling. I love to write. But write what? to who? and why? Those questions would find there answers in the pages of my life as the story of me unfolded. Answers that are some days to painful to put into words let alone sentences.


So yes, I do love blogging about my family. I love finding photos of them and then writing down some of the more memorable moments of our days together. I guess I just like remembering without the fear of the cold hand of an uncaring editor proofing my posts and declaring half of it unsubstantiated. But still, there are sometimes that I would rather avoid the everyday and go back to my love of crafting and allow myself the challenge of going a bit deeper. Record what's really on my heart, what I'm struggling with on this journey, and most importantly how faithful God is to walk beside me. But, this blog doesn't really give me that freedom because this blog's intention has always been to capture the treasure in my life: my husband and my children. And for a long time, that was enough. But now, I feel parts of me hidden behind nice posts about nice afternoons with lovely photos of smiling kids, and for a longer time I have known that it is not entirely an accurate portrait of who I am, or more importantly, who I am becoming.


So yes, I do believe we all have a calling. And for me it is the overwhelming need to share the many lessons God has been teaching our family, to delve into the deeper waters of my soul and allow the Holy Spirit to move over them transcending me from these false appearances of a happy suburban family and touching again the real pain and sorrow in an effort to feel and know the overcoming power of Christ. God's calling for me and the purpose of my creation is to write. Both the sermon this past weekend and the psychologist visits with my daughter have confirmed that not only is my calling to write but a bigger part of me lives to write. Without writing I cannot express myself. I'm not a public speaker. I'm not a person of any stretch of the imagination that can wrangle an audience and leave them wanting more. I can barely communicate effectively in my own home. I have a phone phobia that is unbelievable, but I can compose symphonic emails that would make even the strongest of men weep. Not that there is anything in me that is bragging about that. It is just something that has always been there. Something deeper. Something that creates spaces between me and the rest of the world in their hurried little life cocoons. I pause. I think through things until there is nothing left of the idea. I ponder. I stretch my brain around a plan and I shake out of it every ounce of "What If" until I control most of, if not all, the answers. I am incapable of chatting. I've tried. It's awkward. I hate that about me. To linger over a cup of coffee with a best friend and chat about the sale at Macy's is beyond me. I wish I was different. I wish sometimes for less of who I was made to be. Less writer. More reader. Less soulfulness. More light-hearted.  Less knowing. More naive. Less thoughtfulness. More oblivious. Less sense. More sensibility. Less deep in the ache of dying. More caught up in the joy of living.


Maybe all the writers of this world feel the same. Or maybe that's just me. I know Thoreau did. So much of me wants to run off to the woods "and live deliberately" with him. Casting off the shame I feel for being unable to just be in the moment without my soul recording every, every detail and storing it in the files of my emotional memory. Freedom from the constraints of society to live in the order of the masses and fall into the rank and file of suburbia. Oh how I long for these chains to fall to the ground unlocking me from this life of constant revision. Revising the selves of me into the proper roles of who is deemed "normal." The writing is freeing. The living is effort. And it is effort that has caused me to bury the who that I am. The real me. The created me. And nothing but God Himself can undo what I have so recklessly done. Unbury the person He intended me to become.


Sitting here in the spring of the year and feeling the warmth of the sun, I know it is a time for renewing promises, for awakening new life, and I guess it is far past time to find me again.


The weekly sessions with Jessa's psychologist have revealed that there are things unfinished in me. Healing that has not been completed, and in her Dr.'s words, "It is like having a band aid on the pain, waiting for it to scab over, and then daily confronted with the idea that someone is literally ripping it off of your wound, band aid, scab, and all."  No wonder the hurt of rejected love aches so deeply. She challenged me to journal. I said I blogged for our family. She told me to write for me. For what I want to say without weighing every word, every thought, just writing how the Spirit moves me too.


And that's what this post is about. Talk about burying my lead! My professor would cringe if he knew! lol!  


I'm creating a contemplative blog for me. I just can't believe how many HOURS it took me to create the layout. And yes, my kids were woefully neglected today and watched far too many cartoons, and yes the dog, he stayed outside most of the day, and yes, my husband was forced to eat left-overs, and I'm sorry, truly I am, and don't even get me started on my hair, but after all day of cracking html code - I finally have a blog for my writings. For my journal. I finally did something I've been wanting to do, but kept avoiding.


So, if you want to read the ramblings of my heart and see my first journal entry at Surviving in Shadowlands click on the link. And since I was having an adventurous sort of day, I decided to finally enter a photo contest! I love the photo on my first blog entry so much and this week's challenge at i ♥ faces was Dramatic B&W images. Perfect. And so, I found some courage laying around the dusty corners of my heart, and I did just that. Entered. Yes. Yes, I did. And I know I will awaken tonight in a cold sweat berating myself with questions like, "What on earth are you doing? Aaaaack! Who are you? And where did you hide the old me?" Hopefully I'll still be able to confidently answer myself, "Well now, homegirl, you better hang on 'cause we makin' some changes up in here." lol!