After reading Don Miller's book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years last year, I've thought a lot about what it means to live a good story. Yesterday, Emily and others at Prodigal Magazine shared their thoughts about life and story and how one informs the other. I read a few of the posts and they reminded me once again, when we write our stories across the big, blank canvas of our lives, not one of them reads exactly like the other.

Other people's stories fascinate me. I want to know what makes them laugh or cry or fall to their knees. I ask myself how they love, and what moments take their breath away. I love watching people live their story all wild and tangled and free, because it helps me live mine the same way. For a long time, I feared I would live a small life. I don't mean small in significance, but small in experience. We don't measure significance by the things we do, but by the person we become. Our experiences shape us, and break us, and build us into that person.

I don't fear the smallness anymore. I live as full and deep and wide as the canvas will allow. And when I think the edge of it will rise up to meet me, I find there is room to go further still. Sometimes I catch myself looking too hard for the boundaries and forgetting that boundaries don't tell a good story--essential elements do. So, I add in people who act silly, and places that make me cry for the beauty. I throw in a page or two of international intrigue, a smidge of trouble, and momentary lapses of sanity, until the edges recede and the story begins right where I left it.


What are the essential elements of your story? And how well are you living it?

Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement since my last post. I gathered each one of them to my heart, where I will save them for a time when I feel like giving up on writing. Which, I'm finding, is nearly every evening after I've written a bit and none of it comes out the way it sounds in my head. Fear is the thing I fight most. Fear says I am not good enough, or known enough, or I have nothing of value to say. I am learning to let the fears come, to sit with them for a moment, and then send them on their way. They may not know it, but they're just passing through.

The things that stick, the ones I give permission to hang around for a while, are the things I've worked for the hardest. In the past few years I've run three marathons (I may have mentioned it once or thirty seven times), and over time, as my bone and muscle built up strength and endurance, so did my spirit. I've built up the muscle of perseverance and stretched the fibers of determination, and on the days when they simply want to pass through, I take their hand and ask them to stay with me for a while. It doesn't take much convincing when they know they are welcome and needed.

Fear may not be your traveling companion. Perhaps it's anger or confusion or pride. Know this, if you are stepping out in faith, these things will come. It doesn't mean you are following the wrong path, it means you need to look for new companions to join you on the journey. I've discovered the closer I get to fear, the closer I am to reaching a place of freedom, where faith leads, fear fails, and I keep company with courage.

Who is keeping you company these days, and who is just passing through?

Last week, I bought myself a bouquet of peonies. I keep flowers in the house most days because they make me smile. This time however, after paying for and bagging my groceries, I walked past the flower department on my way to the exit. I hadn't planned to stop, I was in a hurry and the cart was filled to the top with all of the necessary goods. Things like toilet cleaner and lettuce. I walked past black buckets of roses and babies breath and started to pick up my pace, stopping mid-stride when I spotted the heavy, tight buds of the peonies. They're my favorite flower. I picked one bouquet out of the bucket, looked at the price tag, and put it back. Then I picked it up again. Then I put it back.

It was ridiculous, both the price and the puny number of buds. I spied a larger bouquet, multi-colored, with a bright flash of pink petals. I hesitated to look at the price tag, but I did and even though it was silly to pay the equivalent of twenty dollars for a bunch of peonies, I bought them anyway.

I set them on the table in a white pitcher, and all week long I watched them open from tight fists to open petaled palms. It was like watching joy unfurl. There is so much hope bound up in the bud, so much potential for beauty. For some time now, I've felt God whispering the word 'Bloom' to me. I hear it echoing in my spirit, a call to the hope and potential He placed in me. I felt it there for years, growing from seed to sprout to bud, and I wondered if the blooming would ever happen. I thought maybe I'd die before I had the chance to find out what I'm made of, before I had the chance to blossom. That might sound seven shades of crazy and melodramatic, but I was the bud for so long I thought I might wither on the stem.

This year, I feel the beginnings of the bloom. I have wrestled privately, and occasionally here on this blog, with my desire to write. As I've grown, so has my love for stringing words. I've hesitated to call myself a writer out of fear it isn't true. But the truth is, I write, and when I do I feel the petals shifting, readying themselves. A few months ago, with the word 'Bloom' breathing heavy down my neck, I began to accept that it's possible, I might just be a little bit of a writer. And so I started writing some things, not here, but in a file in Microsoft Word. And this one precious file has grown into something more than I thought it would, and so I'm making some shape and some sense out of it, and I'm wrapping it all up in something called a book proposal. I don't know if you can fully appreciate the ridiculousness of this. I can, but I continue working on it anyway, on both the writing and the blooming. Because I realize now, I can't have one without the other.

How about you? Are you budding, blooming, or somewhere in between? Please share! I need the encouragement.

On Friday, I wrote for a few minutes on the word prompt: Brave. For days, the word has rolled around inside me, gathering dirt and moss along the way. Brave gets dirty if we let it hang around for a while. I'm no trail blazer, friend. I find people who are doing big things and I hitch a ride. My husband is one of these people. Nearly every exciting thing that has happened to me, has been a direct result of placing my feet in his footsteps, on a path he paves. For a season, that was enough. While mothering my littles, it was enough for me to take his hand and let him lead because I was too scared and too bone tired to do anything else.

I spent countless hours reading to my littles back then. A favorite with my girls was The Very Lazy Ladybird. The story follows the ladybird as she decides to look for a new place to sleep, but first, she needs to find a comfortable way to travel. She latches on to all manner of animals, but none are a perfect fit for the journey. The tiger is too loud, the kangaroo too jumpy, the tortoise too slow. Each one is busy living life in the best way they know how, but none of their methods suit the ladybirds delicate sensibilities. Her final attempt to find the perfect place was on the trunk of a sneezing elephant. With an emphatic 'Achoo', he finally sent her flying to freedom and the realization that her wings were made for flight.

Following people who live brave is a good practice. I learned valuable lessons in the following, like how to take risks and live with passion. I learned how to chase dreams and what courage looks like up close. But there comes a time when practice is not enough, when we realize that following forged paths will not get us where we want to go. Brave beckons from an altogether new place, from behind thickets and hedgerows and thorny vines. Brave forces us to see that our fragile wings will bear our own weight, and they will make us fly. I still follow my husband because sometimes courage can be caught, but I've started to look for the new places too. The ones where I trample on vines and beat the air blue with my wings. And slowly, I am finding them.

Do you think about bravery too? What kind of path do you find yourself following? I just signed up for my first writer's conference, which will require a certain amount of courage that I'm not sure I possess. How about you?

In eighth grade, my English teacher Mr. Mono asked us to write an essay on our dreams. I didn't think to ask for clarification on this, and true to my matter-of-fact, pragmatic self, I wrote an essay on what I dreamt about the previous night. He returned the paper and gently suggested that next time I might consider staying on topic. I, thinking I was on topic, came away slightly confused. Apparently, no one else shared my confusion because standing tall and proud at the top of their papers were letter grades, while scribbled at the top of mine was a large, red question mark.

As far as dreams go, that question mark has hovered above my head ever since I saw it written across that lined sheet of college rule paper. I wondered if I wasn't the dreaming type. Or that I didn't dream big because I didn't know how. Or, maybe that growing up on a solid diet of realistic expectations with a high value placed on practicality, swept me clean of dreams. I didn't realize that for some of us, dreams gather in the cobwebbed corners, the ones that can't be swept clean no matter how much life and well meaning adults try.

Big dreamers draw me in; they both fascinate and overwhelm me. Sometimes I want to be like them, and then I remember that my dreams are spun in the dark, still places. I don't know what makes some of us out-loud dreamers and some of us silent dream weavers. Out-loud dreamers paint the walls and floors with their dreams, while others of us carefully spin them in the corners where the floorboards meet.

There comes a time though, when the afternoon sun hits the shadow and gossamer strands just right, and the beauty of it takes your breath away. Your dream's intricate design becomes perfect and clear. And you realize that you've been creating it there all along, you just needed the light to shine just so in order to see it.

Hello there! Welcome to Five Minute Friday. I'm joining Lisa-Jo at the Gypsy Mama where today we write for five minutes on being empty. I'm a mother. I could probably write for five years on this, but I disciplined myself to keep it to minutes. Join me there?

1. Write for 5 minutes flat – no editing, no over thinking, no backtracking.
2. Link back here and invite others to join in.
3. Please visit the person who linked up before you & encourage them.

Prompt: Empty

GO

There's a quote floating around in the ether that says something to the effect of wanting to 'die empty'. In other words, this person wants to give of themselves in such a way, that when it's time to meet God, they have nothing left to give. They already gave it all.

When I first read this quote I had small children. Three little people who made constant irrational demands: Feed Me, Bathe Me, Get up in the middle of the night and pretend that you actually enjoy this part of mothering me. I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever read. I emptied myself on a daily basis over things like stinky diapers and toddler tantrums. Obviously this person was a man and had no idea what they were talking about. There was never anything left to give.

My children grew up a little. I stopped calling the person who said that quote stupid. I realized that this season of mothering very little ones is brief. I have to be purposeful about finding ways to empty myself now. I spill myself onto these dear ones still, but these days my husband gets more, and Jesus, and my treadmill. I discovered I love to spill onto the page too.

And I surprise myself, because I realize I'm working my way back to empty.

STOP

A while back I wrote an essay and sent it to NPR's This I Believe. Last week it went up on the site. If you have a moment, head on over for a short spell and read my thoughts on how love and family life can capture our hearts in a way that makes them no longer our own. And then pop back in here again and let me know what you think.

*This essay has been known to make a grown man cry. Of course, he also cried over a Taylor Swift song, so I took it with a grain of salt. Also, I am not secretly referring to my husband. He doesn't cry over Taylor Swift songs. Or my writing:)

This morning there was a watercolor sky as the sun tried to rise through the clouds and snow fell like white confetti. Peach and pink and gold. Beautiful. When I see mornings like this, I want so badly to find a way to capture it and carry it around in my pocket like a tiny treasure. Something lovely to pull out and hold in my palm while I go about my day. My husband's cousin is an artist, and whenever I see something paint-worthy, I think of him, and I wonder if it would capture his eye too.

I envy him that. The ability to capture and release this beautiful world with his eyes and his hands and his gift. A dear friend is a musician, a violinist, and I think about her too and wonder what music she hears when she sees a smile or a sunrise or her laundry pile. I think it must be a glorious thing, to hear the music and to make it too.

The artist has a day job and a family. He has a show to prepare for, and according to his wife, he needs more time and more art. The musician is a full time mom to three. She runs a busy home, and her music suffers. I know because she told me. I wonder if they feel frustration in the inability to pursue their art as they would choose? Does the inspiration ever fade? Or does it build and back up until they have no other choice but to give in and create?

I feel that way sometimes about writing. It's as if the words busy themselves building a tower in my heart until they must, must find a way out. I think they find their escape through a very small window, one that squeezes each letter out slow, like molasses. It doesn't feel like a treasure I can put in my pocket yet, or something that captures the bit of beauty that is inside, building word towers. Maybe someday it will. Maybe it won't. For now, I try to be okay with that. I think of my artist cousin and violinist friend and I know that the path to art isn't perfect, it is simply putting one foot in front of the other and staying the course.

What path are you walking? How hard is it to stay the course?

I take a lesson in Pilates once a week. I love it. I'm not particularly good at it, but it's good for me. It stretches out all the places that I spend most of the week pulling tight. A few weeks ago, the instructor mentioned that another of her clients asked if she does the same routine with everyone, a sort of 'one size fits all' approach. She laughed and said no, that would be impossible. She has one client who is a ballerina, one who has done pilates for years, one who is an athlete, etc. I kept waiting for her to mention me, 'one who does laundry and wipes dirty noses', but she didn't. She said, 'I told him that you have different needs than the ballerina, you run marathons'.

Apparently, I was the athlete in this scenario. A runner, yes, but athlete? That's like calling what I do in the kitchen on a nightly basis cooking. I can not begin to tell you how ridiculous that sounds to my ears, and also to the ears of anyone who has ever seen me attempt sportage of any kind. I mentioned it to my husband. He said, 'Well, you have run three marathons and one half. I think it's safe to say you've earned the title.' And I thought, is that possible? Is it possible that I can look beyond my past, to the evidence of my present, and own this? And surprisingly, the answer came back a resounding yes. I think I can. I believe I might have the sore muscles, ribboned medals, and worn out running shoes to prove it.

We've talked about this before, this idea of being named, of calling ourselves who and what we are, and of listening to the voice of Truth. I've spent far too much time waiting for someone to call things out of me, when I know them to be Truth in my heart. I haven't given enough thought to the fact that I am always in a process of becoming. We all are. Maybe I've always been an athlete. Maybe with each word laid, I am becoming a writer. Maybe I am learning to see like an artist. Maybe I'm all the things I've wanted to be, and I need to have the courage to speak the truth and call these gifts out of hiding.

I've been circling around these ideas for a while now. I read and journal and pray about them. I look at what others are saying and it resonates deeply. But, I feel like I'm still looking for the magic key that will unlock the art in me, the one that will allow me to stop circling and come home to nest. One of these days I hope to find it.

I've asked before, and I'll ask again. For those of you who find yourself still wondering, searching, hoping to unlock the hidden things: What do you know to be true? What do you wish to be called?

I have a bunch of stuff rattling around in my head, but jet lag isn't conducive towards putting ideas together in anything other than bullet points. So, here you go:

I am reading Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water again. This is my third time studying this book (I say studying because it's so much more than a book that one simply reads), and I can not recommend it highly enough for those of you who struggle with what it means to be a Christian and an artist. While I would love to claim the title of artist/writer, it's an area of my life that I'm still attempting to define. It feels, I don't know, presumptuous? Inflated? False?

I don't have this issue in other areas. I call myself a runner. I have the unnaturally tight hamstrings to prove it. I call myself a mom. In fact, there are three little people who also call me mom. Incessantly. I call myself a Christian, although judging from some of my behavior, this could sometimes be up for debate. But artist? Writer? Those are slippery words that I can't seem to pin down.

In her book, L'Engle quotes Jean Rhys from the Paris Review, 'All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake.'


I realized yesterday that I am nearing my 500th post. And while most of what I've done here is record rather than write, I want to believe that it's adding up to something bigger. I've written for other people's blogs, the paper, a magazine, and once a hand delivered birthday letter to Nelson Mandela. (For which my husband took credit. For which I will always be bitter. For which we need another post.) My words float here and there like the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup, and still, I struggle to own it. Perhaps if I learn to see them as drops feeding the lake, a contribution to the greater work? I am no river, no creek, no stream. I am a drop in the vast body of water that feeds souls. Might that be enough?

Are you an artist? A writer? Musician? Chef? Stylist? The next Martha Stewart? How do you claim your place in the great lake that is your art? When did you begin to think that you might, maybe, in an ideal world be an artist, and when did you truly believe it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.