The fire to write
I sit by the fire with a couple hours to write. This is what I wait for, ask for, long for. Why can’t I move past the ache in my chest? The ache started at the Salvation Army, which is right across from the car wash. Nothing like purging some no-longer-needed items and then sparkling things up with a clean car. There was a line of cars at the Salvation Army. January must be a busy time for drop offs, I thought. A woman two cars in front of me had a trunk full of baby gear. The woman in the car ahead of me handed off several shiny Nordstrom shopping bags brimming with household items. She closed her trunk without handing off a sandy throw pillow with shiny gold piping. Huh. That pillow must be a keeper. To each her own, right?
I was dropping off bags from a basement closet cleanout. Most of the contents were things I had held on to for years–shirts and sweatshirts that made it through several rounds of giveaways and previously found safety in the keep pile, only for me to forget about them entirely and not lay eyes on them again until the next time I decided to purge. Maybe this time I was feeling more ruthless, or maybe time helped me detach whatever meaning previously clung to them, or maybe I finally became numb to the notion that our stuff helps us hold on to the past–past selves, past experiences, past adventures. Maybe I’d realized how much time it costs me to care for things because I had just watched my girls rip the paper off so many packages and then had spent hours of time cleaning and finding new homes for the gifts. Whatever it was, as I carried bags of my discarded things, instead of feeling lighter releasing their weight, a heavy lump settled in my chest.
The disheartening reality that too much of what the Salvation Army collects still ends in landfills pulled me down. Capitalism and consumerism keep us buying so much stuff, gifting so much stuff, and needing to get rid of so much stuff. While I hope these items find a new home, so much of the need in our country isn’t for things but for care. Why is it so easy to confuse the two?
At the carwash, I sat in the driver seat, suds sliding their way down the windshield, and watched a woman step out of her white Audi SUV and walk to one of the cushy black pleather chairs. While she sat waiting, she thumbed through some papers that looked like plans for a new kitchen. This is what some people do on a Monday afternoon. Take care of their fancy cars while considering plans for fancy kitchens. This is what I do, too, apparently. In fact, I emailed a kitchen company this morning. How is it that some of us plan kitchen renovations and have our cars washed by hand while others of us wonder if there will be a next meal and how to pay for healthcare? It’s enough to drive me mad.
To distract myself from the tightening in my throat, I opened my email on my phone. As if a gift just for me, one of my favorite newsletters was waiting in my inbox. Maybe the message would be the antidote to my ache. The end of my friend’s newsletter announced a new course she is teaching this spring about how to write to delight the reader, how to write so that others actually want to read what you write. It’s true that she knows a thing or two about this. When her work comes to my inbox, I receive a burst of anticipatory joy just knowing that whatever is waiting will make me feel warm, cozy, and encouraged, that her words will wrap me up and help me feel and leave me with a thoughtful, appreciative smile.
I think about the topics I want to write about and wonder how I can write their complexities in a way that will make others want to read them. How can I write about difficult subject matter in a way that will draw people in with the same hope and curiosity and longing I feel? I must need to take her course, I think. And I do, and I will. But in the meantime, I wondered about the ache because the ache is often the place from which I write. Is it possible to delight people from the ache?
I arrived home from the car wash to my quiet house. Someone other than me had already gently laid my daughters down for their naps because I pay a babysitter so that I can have hours of time to myself to do things like go to the Salvation Army and have my car washed and (Lord, help me) write. Now, as I sit here, the fire roars beside me, and the ache in my chest has dissipated. Making the ache vanish is never the goal, but I find that processing gives it what it needs so that it can teach me something.
My soul now longs to share some of these learnings. This makes me jumpy. My writer self feels very close to my true self, and I have been shielding this self for a long time. I learned how to flit around lightly with a smile on my face dazzling everyone with my helpfulness, my care, my compassion. What do I need? Oh, nothing! Nothing at all. It is all about YOU. At first it felt like protection: follow this script and the world will like you, and if you are liked, you will feel safe. My true range of emotion is much wider, of course, a sea that glistens at the surface, sure, and also has strong surging currents below.
I’ve learned to plan space for this quiet surrender so that I can ride these currents–feeling them, trusting them–letting them pull me under and also surfing their waves. I think the currents know something about who I was created to be, so I spend time with them. My writer self comes alive during this time, in the depths of stillness.
The space I claim for stillness is more than feels acceptable, yet I resist letting the societal norm of what is acceptable guide me. It is countercultural to sit by the fire and wrestle with words in a world that says, “Hustle! Strive! Grow bigger–faster!” It is countercultural in a world that says mothers are selfless beings who care only for the needs of their children to make space for alone time that will reap no other benefit to my family besides me feeling more like myself. I must keep reminding myself that what I want most for my children is for them to grow into whoever they were created to be. I must model this by growing into who I was created to be.
The fire blazes, flickers, dances, shines. The flames are bright and hot. There is safety in the warmth created and danger in its potential to burn it all down. So, too, do I feel safe in the warmth of God’s love and terrified by what that love may ask me to illuminate and then let burn. And where, I ask, is the delight? My delight is in the moments of the process that point to truth and lead to connection. The world is already on fire. To what am I clinging? Who am I protecting? What am I fighting for? What am I choosing to let burn? What will we create from the ashes?
