Not the Only One

Too many days like this, where I sit here staring at the screen, the words having abandoned me. What to say? What to write? I know what needs to be written, but the words won’t come.

It sounds far more poetic than it really is. In reality, it’s a huge bother, a predicament that, more times than two, has ended with me banging my head against the nearest surface while I moan and growl in frustration and come so close to swearing it probably is a lie to say I’m not.

Does every writer go through this? Surely C. S. Lewis never had this problem, or Ted Dekker, or Gail Carson Levine?

In writing, as in other areas of my life, I’m prone to think I’m the only one going through my particular issues. Somehow I get the idea they’re unique to me. (How I think that’s possible when I’m living on an earth more than 6,000 years old and the current population is nearly 7 bil., I don’t know, but I do.)

I’ll be browsing blogs, checking out facebook, or (as is most often the case) sitting in church, and something will be said (or written) that will make me jerk to attention. That’s exactly how I feel! The speaker or writer will continue, describing my problems exactly. Time and again it hits me that I’m not alone, I’m not the only one, this is normal and it can be overcome.

And that gives me the power to try again.

An example that has often sprung to mind lately is a sermon I heard a few months ago. A young man who used to come to our church. He and his wife moved down south a couple years ago, where he became the youth pastor at a friend’s church.

All my readers know him as the man who suffered serious heart issues back in August. When he preached at our church, he didn’t spend much time talking about the circumstances surrounding that time. I can’t even remember exactly how he got around to the part that impacted me the most, but when he did, he talked about something I’m very familiar with.

I believe he was talking about prayer, or at least our relationships with God. He described the feeling he said he went through when it seemed like God was distant, like there was this wall separating himself from God, like all his prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. That was when I sat in shock, my mind racing.

Because I’ve had those moments. I’ve had those weeks. I wonder why I don’t feel anything, why nothing seems to be happening. I lie there in silence and fear, breathless and searching, though for what I’m not sure.

I feared that I was the only one who felt that way: like I couldn’t find God, like I was too small to reach Him. I was…hypocritical?...to even really think it, but sometimes it felt like God wasn’t even there.

It was such a relief to know I wasn’t alone, that others had been through it before. And it happens time and again (like I said, mostly in church). Whenever I’m going through something, there will be something mentioned every day – something I hear, something I read, something I see – that reminds me of my struggle and encourages me to keep moving. It’s in those moments that I wonder how I could ever doubt God; His timing is perfect. It’s like He reaches down to tap me on the shoulder. “Pay attention, Amber. This is for you.”

Wow. In the true sense of the word, that really is awesome.

The hard part comes when the moment passes and I’ve descended back into the real world, back into the midst of my struggling. Seconds pass, it fades, and I return to the same old habits. I return to the muddy ruts, dragging myself through and barely getting by. Next week, I’ll hear another sermon that will stir my emotions but probably won’t get past my head and into my heart and back out through actions that change the way I’m moving.

That’s my real problem, in writing and in life in general. I see the obstacle, I ponder over it, I plant my hands on my hips and glare at it, I mutter threats against it. I hear the suggestions, the encouragement, and I start to overcome it. But instead of my hill becoming a speed bump under all the energy I could employ conquering it, it practically becomes a mountain for all the extra time I waste crawling over it.

So what to do? It’s so easy to go back to old habits. My mind defaults to all those practiced motions and methods. How do you break those personal traditions? To a mind that is so focused on the end result and impatient to get there, it’s hard to take it day by day, step by step, like I need to. With every day I hesitate, every step I stumble over, it piles up behind me and I give up before I make any progress.

Hence, presence on this blog is sporadic at best, I haven’t completed a book in more than a year and I’ve been through too many works to count, and I’ve found two dozen different ways to talk about this same personal issue.

Sorry about that.

So this is my plan: if I never post any other time, I need to post on Fridays and Tuesdays. If I post on other days of the week, I can skip those days, but I have to do at least that much. Maybe I'll eventually I'll actually figure out how you're supposed to blog and I'll learn to do it right. Until then....