Today one of my blog posts (Knocking on the Wrong Door) is being featured on All Groan Up. Check it out here (or don’t—it’s a free country).
BUT IF YOU DON’T I’LL NEVER EVER EVER TALK TO YOU EVER AGAIN <8[
Wait, what? No, that’s not true. I’ll still talk to you. Sorry about that, kids.
I’ll stop talking now.
Carry on.
I’ll write you a picture with my palette of words
I’ll mix and I’ll mingle the nouns and the verbs.
I’ll paint you a story with my writer’s pen
A blank canvas of imagination has no beginning or end.
I’ll show you the world in colorful letters
I’ll write you a picture with commas and feathers.
A dash of whimsy, a touch of black ink,
A stroke of gray graphite mixed up with a wink.
All the colors of dreams painted with verbs
My pen is the paintbrush, my paint is the words.
Of pink paper poppy and flight of black bird
I’ll paint you a story you’ve never quite heard.
…
Thanks to the ever amazing husband for drawing the picture. He really does put up with a lot around here you know :]
The driftwood tosses about in the sea
Worn by the waves and the turbulent water.
It looks like the end for the branch or the tree
But it’s just the beginning of beauty perfected.
The storm hews the edges, rough and ugly
Smoothing and softening each imperfection.
The salt and the sun bleach out stains dark
Cleansing and purifying in waters deep.
The wood, smooth and white tell a story
Of hot heat and waters deep.
Each line and each mark attest to the voyage
Of battle scars and beauty born in the rough waves of life’s journey.
Life is no different. We are tossed and beaten by trials. We are challenged and changed by the crashing waves of heartache. But in our heartache we are made perfect. The waves smooth out our rough edges, the heat cleanses and purifies our blemishes. We are wrinkled and scarred by the journey, but in the end, we are softer, smoother, and better for the deep waters and crashing waves that tossed and perfected us along the way.
I had a lot of trouble learning how to read when I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was when I finally put the words together, I just remember being the very last kid who could make her way through the jungle of words in a book. None of it made sense to me. I couldn’t grasp how the letters and sounds were supposed to come together and actually mean something. I thought I was stupid and really believed there was something wrong with me. I believed I would never be smart like other people. I hated reading. I hated books. I hated words. I couldn’t spell. I couldn’t even pronounce words correctly. I avoided books and reading because they reminded me of how stupid I thought I was and brought to my attention everything I wasn’t good at.
I was a physical kid—always outside climbing trees and building forts with my brothers. I didn’t want to sit still and learn anything. I believed I couldn’t learn and that I wasn’t smart enough to understand like other people.
But then when I was 11 I picked up a book called The Penny Whistle by B. J. Hoff and something changed inside of me. I have no idea why I picked that book up or cracked it open because it wasn’t something I normally did. I remember loving the illustrations in the book—crisp, detailed pencil drawings that looked like you could touch the page and get graphite on your fingers; perhaps that’s what drew me in. Regardless, it was the words that kept me. Finally, for the first time in my life, words made sense; they ran off the page like water and I drank them up—consumed them one by one to the very last page.
I pulled The Penny Whistle off my bookshelf today—it’s tattered with a piece of tape on the cover. My name is written in black marker on the inside cover with the date July 18, 1997. I flipped through the pages and found the grubby fingerprints off an 11-year-old throughout. The book falls open to my favorite illustration of a tree standing stark against a winter backdrop.
When I held that book today I actually had to stop and take a deep breath to fight back tears. Why? Because that simple little book changed my life. I don’t even remember what the book is really about; the story is lost but the change it brought inside of me remains. When I poured over that book as an 11-year-old girl, I found something inside of myself. I found words. I found ability and intelligence. I found stories. I came alive and knew I had value, capability, and something to share. I went from hating books to loving them—loving the stories held inside two covers. I fell in love with words and began to see them as colors on a palette and the blank page as my canvas. There, reading that book, I fell in love with writing.
When I was a teenager, I remember being sick and bored one day so I cracked open Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The name Daddy-Long-Legs amused me and, for no other reason, I started reading. I read the whole book that day without ever putting it down. I’m not an avid reader even now so it means something when I can’t part with a story until it’s finished. I gobbled up each book by Webster and learned one important thing from her stories—the writer’s voice. I don’t know how to describe Jean Webster—her imagination, her childishness, her sharp sense of humor—she wrote like she was having a witty conversation with each of her readers. I fell in love with her style and find now that my own voice in writing grew out of the whimsy I so love in her books.
Even though I struggled through school and language has always been a challenge for me, I have found that reading is the best lesson I ever learned in writing. In reading, I actually see the way language is laid out on a page in sentences and paragraphs. Instead of just hearing about and practicing the proper construction of individual sentences and parts of speech, I can actually visualize and grasp sentence structure as I read. The more I read, the more I learn about writing. The more I write, the more I want to read and learn more and more from the words and characters acting out the world of grammar on the page. I may never be a very good student. I may never be able to fully understand the complexities of the English language. But I do know the more I read the words of good writers, the better writer I too can be.
“The problem was too big for the lot of them. But her mother always maintained that you had to start where you were or you’d never get anywhere at all” (p. 37, The Penny Whistle).
Today is my baby blog’s first birthday! I can’t believe my baby is growing up :]
It was a slow-going endeavor when I first started blogging. I had but a handful of readers (mostly related to me) and in those early days, one of my first thoughts in writing was always, “how can I get more readers?” Even then, I didn’t write just to be read; I write because I love doing so. I love words and the click, click, click of the words as they’re typed into existence.
Still, even though I love writing just for the pleasure of the words themselves, I would be lying if I said I didn’t care about having readers. If I wanted to write only for myself, I would journal not blog. I blog to share what I love with other people but to do that, well dang it, you need readers! So plan and connive I did and slowly, ever so slowly, the readers came. But then, once I had bright eyes watching for my words, I panicked a little bit. I thought about all the different interests and backgrounds of all the different people reading and drove myself crazy trying to decide what I could possibly write that would interest so many lovely people. Let me tell you what I’ve learned in this first year:
It’s been a great first year, kids :] How about you? How do you manage to be yourself even when others are watching and reading your words?
I am just old enough to remember life before the internet and cell phones. I grew up playing outside, not on the computer. I wasn’t on Facebook or the owner of a cell phone until I was in college. I rarely text and am probably slower than my grandma (who is super tech savvy, by the way) when I do.
Still, technology and the hyper-connectivity of the world around me have changed the way I interact and relate to people. Like so many my age, I am more comfortable communicating by means of blogging and Facebooking than I am in face-to-face interactions. Not that I can’t have an intelligent face-to-face conversation, but I am better able to open up and speak my heart through writing than I am in talking.
Words are my world, they are my voice and the best way I know how to share my heart and person with others.
Because I am sharing my heart and who I am when I write, it means a lot to me when people read my writing; their reading communicates interest in who I am and what I have to say. On the flip side, when people show no interest in my writing, to some extent that makes me feel they aren’t interested in knowing me. Not that I expect everyone to read my blog–not everyone has the time or interest and blogging isn’t the best way to build relationships with each and every person in my life. But when someone says they want to know me better and expresses no interest in what I have to say, I think, “you say you want to know me, I have put myself out there in my writing to be known, and yet you act like what I’ve written means nothing to you–do you really want to know me better or are you just saying that?”
In the same way, I say I want to know God better; I say I want to have a better relationship with him and better know his heart–and then fail to read his words to me. This struck me quite hard the other day: I want people to know me better through my writing and feel they aren’t interested in me when they don’t read what I’ve written. God wants me to know him better and has spoken his heart to me through the written word–the Bible–and yet I fail to read his words (therefore communicating a total lack of interest in knowing him better).
I love the written word, I love the way words can be combined and moved around to say what you want just the way you want. Why, if I love words so much and put so much value into my own words being read, do I not value the words of God? I say I want to know him but my actions say otherwise. God has chosen to share himself with me in the way I love most–through words. The words of God are beautiful and powerful and have changed who I am completely. You may not believe in the Bible–in the words of God. I do. I believe in God’s words with all my heart and live my life based on this belief. I am moved to value God’s words more and make reading his words a priority in my life. If I really want to know God, then I must read what he has shared with me about himself through the written word.
How about you–how do you feel when people do or don’t read your words or listen to what you say?
I was kind of cynical about starting a blog back in the day but I’m glad I did—here’s why:
That is a list of 7 things not 10. I never promised 10 you know and I don’t know why 10 is supposed to be the perfect number anyway; I’ve always preferred 7 :]
So, why do you blog? What have you learned from putting your thought out there for the whole world to read? If you don’t blog, why not?
“We read to know that we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis
I didn’t know what to make for dinner so I decided to poke around on The Pioneer Woman’s blog and peruse her many amazingly enticing recipes and finally had to get a donut and some Pringles to snack on while I looked at all the delicious meals and pictures on her site. I know the Pioneer Woman is famous. I knew her recipes are known and loved by the whole gigantic world and she’s been on TV and everyone knows her name because she’s awesome and amazing. What I didn’t know (since I had never actually been to her blog before) is that she’s a normal person. And by normal I mean she does stuff that sounds normal/boring–she lives on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma (normal/boring), she has four kids and is a stay-at-home wife and mother (normal/boring), she homeschools (normal/boring), she cooks, gardens, decorates, takes pictures, blah blah blah–normal boring stuff, right?
But she’s not boring. She’s hilarious and inspiring. She takes stunning photographs. She cooks food that I believe may very well be served beyond the gates of splendor and after looking through just a small part of her recipes, I don’t think I’ll ever look anywhere else for meal ideas. She’s a normal wife, mother, and homemaker but she has captured so much beauty and interest in her normal life and activities.
After looking at the Pioneer Woman’s blog, I wanted to be just like her. I thought if I could be super cool like the Pioneer Woman then everyone would love me and they would have to build a separate internet just to accommodate the traffic on my blog because everyone would come and check out my coolness and people would write books about me and life would be beautiful–if I were the Pioneer Woman. But I’m not. I’m just me without any important thoughts to share on my scarcely viewed blog so I sighed and went back to my housework. I was folding some laundry (see picture below) when it occurred to me that the Pioneer Woman’s life isn’t beautiful and exciting because of what she does (cooking, homeschooling, etc.), her life is beautiful and inspiring because she has made it that way–she has turned ordinary activities into funny stories and yummy recipes and happy children and a world filled with fans that love coming to her blog and seeing what she’s up to that day. It occurred to me that my life is what I make it out to be. If I view my life and self as boring and unimportant, then it probably will be boring and unimportant. But if I value the life I have, as normal as it may be, then it’s something worth having and sharing. I don’t need lots of profoundly important things to say, I just need to say what I have to say and share what it is I’ve been given. Life is as beautiful and stunning as you make and see it.
I can’t and don’t need to be the Pioneer Woman and she can’t be me. She’s doing what she was meant to do and I just need to be me and do what I’m supposed to…even if they don’t need to build a second internet to accommodate my traffic (bummer).
I love getting mail. I love it when I’m shuffling through all the junk mail and flyers and happen upon a real letter with a real stamp and a hand-written letter folded perfectly inside. I love the way the paper feels and the way the ink looks pressed into the paper by the hand of someone I love. I love all the unique stamps that carry a letter from its home to mine. I love the way the feathery postmark looks and the story it tells of a letter’s journey–forever stamping a record of the place from which a letter came and the date and time it was sent. I hold onto letters and cards–they’re bursting out of boxes and drawers and notebooks all throughout my house–each one a reminder of someone I love and the time they took to sit and write me a real letter–not an e-mail or a text, but a real pen to paper treasure.
I have a few friends that write fabulous letters and cards; they probably have no idea how much I enjoy their notes or how I keep each one like a treasure. My friend Ashley is a letter writing goddess–six pages front and back filled with hilarious stories and words of love and encouragement that echo in my heart long after the letter is read and tucked away. My friend Sarah is the same way–her letters aren’t long, usually just a card, but she sends them for no reason and there is never a card better than a card received for no reason. To think that someone thought of you, bought a card, jotted a note, and sent a paper bundle of happiness for no reason! I love the way each person’s unique characteristics show up in the words they write–from my best friend Rachel’s big boxy letters written all in caps to my mother’s beautiful script, each letter carries the authors very movement and personality in their handwriting.
Some of my most cherished letters are the ones from my brother Brad when he was serving in the military overseas. I have five brothers and sometimes feel very disconnected from them as the only girl in the family. There’s a bond that brothers share that I just can’t have with them and I have no sisters to share such a bond with either. But corresponding with my brother helped me know him better and each word he penned is very special to me still. It’s a memory of a time when both are lives were rapidly changing from childhood to adulthood and I’m glad for the record of those times and the words, however simple and trite, that were passed across the world in pen and paper. I also treasure the many, many notes my husband has written me over the years–from a few words scribbled on wrappers and scraps of paper to long letters and cartoons–each word charts our story from our long-distance dating relationship to the young married couple we are now; of all the things my husband has given me over the years, there is nothing I treasure more than his words.
I hope to be better about writing letters of my own. The next time I go to write a text or e-mail, I hope I’ll remember to stop and jot the words on paper instead–to take the time to let that person know that I’m really thinking of them and they are worth the extra time it takes to actually put pen to paper.
Outside Air 