Happy Birthday to me. My blog is two years old today. Writing almost every day, that adds up to over 600 blogs. That is enough blogging to engage a good excuse to forget most of what I wrote. If someone were to quote me, I might think it sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe I’d say, “I think I heard that somewhere.”
It all makes sense. There is truth in the statement, “I am not the same person I was two (or ten or thirty) years ago.” There is that of oneself that remains the same, too. So, those things that I wrote out of my transient self, I guess were written by someone else. Those things I wrote out of my true, lasting self, were written by me. This rationale would never hold up in a court of law. It is akin to the argument, “The devil made me do it.”
I am operating on very little sleep, as you might guess. Nevertheless, I wanted to blog today in celebration of my 2 years. One year ago, I made a commitment to have a manuscript ready to send off to a publisher. Well, that didn’t happened. But, having made the commitment, I actually moved in that direction.
First, I had to decide what I wanted to write. My son, as I’ve said before (see? I remember that), told me early on that there was a book in my blog writings somewhere. My blogging friend, Mary, taught me how to put my blogs into categories which in turn helped me to see clusters of writings on the same topic. I wish that had been enough. Just print off all the blogs under the topic of “family” or “parenting” or “religion” and walla! a book! That didn’t exactly work, although, clustering them seemed to be a step in the right direction. No matter which topic, I knew there was a lot of work to do to turn the blogs into a book.
I really didn’t know what direction to go after that. I signed up for a writer’s workshop to take place in Bemidji, MN in July. I decided to relax about making a decision about what my first book was to be about until after the workshop. Along with the registration fee, I sent some samplings of my writings, including some blogs. I don’t really want to recap the story of what happened at the conference. Suffice it to say that I got the direction I was seeking.
Over the years, I have written a few stories of Jesus just for fun. On my blog, I have shared portions of these stories. This is what I was encouraged to begin with. It is the most difficult of all the possibilities, as it turns out. Once I decided to go that route, I had all sorts of hurdles to jump, including a s__t-load of research to do and some real letting go of what I thought were some pretty magnificent ideas. Finally, I settled on a plan and I am in the process of carrying that out. Each day I do a little research and to writing something. Actually, I succeed in getting something written about three days a week. I have another life, after all. At least I am moving forward.
If there is anything I have learned in the past year, it is about commitments. I learned that commitments are only useful to point us in the right direction but setting dates for accomplishing tasks is almost always unrealistic. There are so many things we can’t anticipate, like finding you don’t really have the knowledge or skill to do what you set out to do. But if a commitment is firm, getting the knowledge or skill becomes just a part of the process of getting where you want to go.
And then there is faith. Will the outcome actually happen? One could get a disease that makes the completion impossible. Life circumstances could force one to abandon the plan temporarily or permanently. Since one doesn’t really know the future, faith is letting that all go. I think that is what Jesus had to do. I don’t believe he really knew until near the end, that his days were numbered. I think he had set out to share his awareness of the amazing love of God with others and grow a community that he liked to call “the kingdom of God”. Because of his death, what he dreamed and started had to be continued by others. The surprise was that he was able to help them even after death.
I don’t expect my project to accomplish what Jesus did. I am just trying to have a little of the faith he had to keep doing what I feel led to do and, as he did, leave the rest to the Father.