A Little Announcement…

A friend sent me this photo of Anne Sexton after this bookish post I shared a few months ago. There’s something about it that I find quite arresting. Her surroundings, typewriter sitting at her elbow waiting for words and books slanting against one another, waiting to be rifled through. Her outfit, sleeves rolled up on her button down, with comfortable slacks and black flats. Her position, chair tipped back with her feet on the desk. She props her hand in the air and her lips part – she’s about to say something good, something worth writing down.
This is the life of a writer at its best.
At times I find myself fantasizing about this life, and I have to stop and remember that writing is hard. It’s bleeding and weeping and prying your hands from perfection in order to grasp hold of the truth. It’s nothing like leaning back and propping up your feet; or at least not very often, and certainly not when there’s a camera in the room to document it. Sexton knew this all too well.
But just now, today, I feel very much ready to take it on, this life of writing – the bleeding and the crying, and then, in scarce and blessed moments, with the afternoon light gleaming through the window, the happy relief of having said something good, something worth writing down.
So here is my little announcement : Ally and Darrell of Prodigal Magazine asked me to be a staff writer for their newly refurbished online mag. My first article will be published later this week or next, but you’ll see my words over there a couple of times each month. I’m excited, scared, thankful.
But most of all, I’m ready.

I’m Not the Story Weaver.

I am a writer. Consequently, my general outlook on life is a series of archetypes, themes, plots, summaries, critiques… there’s a lot of pre-writing and re-writing going on in my head, and there’s no switch to turn it off. All the world is a stage, you know.

But it’s the endings I’m not good at. I’m a total sap when it comes to endings. Mostly, I envision that the story actually comes to an end, a resolution. I often realize much further on in my writing and reading that this is a false assumption.

Lately, I’ve begun to wonder about our fascination with the fairy-tale ending. We began by expecting it, and now we’ve become disillusioned with it, naturally.

But where does the fallacy lie in “happily ever after”?

Is there no such thing as happiness?

Or have we made a bad habit of ending the story at the wrong part?

So the prince and the princess get married… and???  What comes after that? What exactly constitutes the “happily ever after”? A fairy-tale prince or princess would never be unfaithful to one another. The prince would never be a deadbeat dad. The princess would never become a bitter, self-conscious old woman that drives her prince and her children crazy. They would never lose the castle, the talking livestock, and the pumpkin carriage in a faulty investment. They would never bicker or become alcoholics or abuse their kids. They would never die of terminal illnesses.

And yet, here we are. We live in a dichotomy of pure joy and pure tragedy. We find love and we find hate. We can’t get rid of the evil stepsisters and the villains; quite often we are our own worst enemy. We make the best decisions we’ve ever made, and then we screw it up.

Maybe it’s the ambiguity of it, the elusive “happiness” that leaves us confused and frustrated and empty when we try to live in the “ever after.” The brokenness wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did, and we can’t see how it could ever be right again. We have no pre-text for what to do when we screw up, so the “happily ever after” plan is eradicated.

Or maybe it’s that we’ve totally abandoned the possibility of redemption.

I yearn for the easy answer, the redemptive ending. I wish I could tie the strings of all our loose ends together so that our lives would never unravel as they so often do. I keep finding myself trying to weave it all together, tightly, to make it mean something, to make our stories and our selves whole again.

I think it’s better if I just stop trying to rewrite the thing. Life is beautiful and gripping and horrific and triumphant and tragic enough on its own.

I’m not the Story-Weaver. I need to just keep reading.

Birthday Blessings.

This Thursday my mom will turn the big 5-0. Birthdays are always special, but this one feels especially victorious. She’s made it through a hard year struggling with treatment after treatment, surgery after surgery to combat her metastatic breast cancer.
And so we thought, what better reason to celebrate this milestone than with a surprise birthday party full of friends, family, flowers and good food?
flowers 2 cakes 1
My aunts [my dad’s sister and his brothers’ wives, and my mother’s sister], cousins and I emailed, called, schemed, and prayed for months to plan the party. And then we baked, and cooked, and whipped, and frosted, and decorated, and talked, and laughed.
bakers
It took a lot of prayer, a lot of planning, a lot of lying through my teeth and maybe more frosting than one body should really consume in one weekend, but we pulled it off. She was surprised!
No one spilled the beans, even though most of the party guests saw her in church yesterday morning. In faith, we refrained from canceling it even though she spent a few days in the hospital last week.
And in faith, we celebrated, thanking God for a beautiful day full of energy and joy and time together.
family 4
the suckrows
friends
hugs
Tina by cakes
It was everything we could have hoped for. I’m a happy, relieved, thankful kind of exhausted.
Maybe you and your family have reason to worry, to wonder what the next few months and years will be like, to think that maybe now is not the time to celebrate. I know how that feels.
But this weekend, all my fear and concern and doubt was replaced by something much more important :
Faith.
Faith to believe that even though it seems like a time to fear the future, tomorrow will be a good day. Faith to believe that life is worth celebrating, even when it’s hard. Faith to believe that He knows our hopes and plans, and He’s working on our behalf.
So, don’t hesitate to celebrate. Do it now. Do it while you can, even if you can’t be sure what today, tomorrow, or next week will hold. Do it together, because family is our best resource for support and strength.
Pray hard. Make memories. Eat everything. And whatever happens, choose to celebrate.

Apocalypse Now, Baby.

Not really. Well, maybe.
Actually, let me just say,
1. I do believe a rapture and apocalypse will occur as it is written in Scripture.
2. I do believe in Jesus and believe that He came to give life in all its fullness, and that people who reject His love will be left behind in the event that He does return to earth.
But is He coming tomorrow, as fringe “believers” have predicted? Most likely not. God doesn’t really adhere to human schedules or man-made mathematical schemes imposed on Scripture to calculate Jesus’ return. And even if He did, would we be left behind simply because we disagreed on the day and the hour? No.
Even so, I find it fascinating to listen to radio hosts discuss what they would do with their last days on earth, and read about friends on Facebook planning a rapture party, and seeing tweets about what people would do if the world were to end tomorrow. What would we do if we knew the end was coming?
All week I’ve been meaning to write a post for you folks, but the words have been halting, at times snarky and depressed, and other times the words have flown freely into a form that I love, but that I think might best be reserved for a time when they aren’t so stinging and sad. Have you ever struggled with that, friends? You write down a good story – a true story – and then realize that if anyone reads it, no matter how well written, it could cause more pain than it’s worth?
I realize that many writers don’t trouble themselves with this. After all, it’s the truth. But deep within me, the part of me that is more than a writer, but a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, a wife, a friend, knows that it does indeed matter. Some subjects are better left alone. Or perhaps they are better saved for another space and time, like a novel that critics and historians may suspect to be partially auto-biographical, but the writer has no comment on the matter, or maybe left behind in a journal that the writer hopes no one will ever do the dishonor of reading, even in death.
Maybe I should invest in invisible ink.
I could just leave those thoughts in my head, but they take up a lot of room.
I am often caught up in what I should be saying, but I think that it’s also important and all too often overlooked to decide what should be left unsaid. I’ve reached the end of this week, having left the pieces I wrote unpublished. And let me tell you, as hard as it was to decide to leave it alone, I’m thankful I did. I’ve left tomorrow unencumbered by an irreversible choice.
And so, the only thing I have left to say at the end of a long week and the day before what probably isn’t the end of the world, is live your life with intention. 
 
I have this terrible habit of skipping to the end of my books and reading the last pages. It’s a control issue and my shrink and I are working through it…. :)
Really, though. It’s incredibly frustrating that I can’t live life that way. Just a sneak peak would be really helpful when I have absolutely no sense of how to handle life. But since I can’t I am learning that to live with the not knowing, to be at peace with the yet unportrayed ending, means that I am forced to live within the moment I’m given. I have to choose my words and actions with intention.
No one knows how and when and where their life is going to end – we each comprehend this in our own sense. Maybe your parent has a terminal illness or your best friend died in an accident or you just lost your grandparent or you’re fighting for your own life. In any case, take time to enjoy this moment, when you’re here and capable of intentionally loving and living your life.
Have a good weekend, friends.

Poem : Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday
My heart is most thankful at the end of a day
when my appetite for life is deeply satisfied.
When working hands are stilled
stomachs filled
and eyes have cried the tears that say,
“this is my life – 
take it all from me”
because I know
that You are so much more adept
at making it beautiful.
How was your Easter weekend, friends? Mine was less about momentum with my blog and work and more about catching up on life at home since I’ve been so busy. I had time to rest, clean, make Easter dinner for my husband and a friend (steaks, roasted carrots and parsnips with a honey glaze, basil mashed potatoes), and – most important of all – reflect on my faith.
Sometimes stepping away from my work can go a long way toward recharging my creative energy – when I went to bed last night my mind couldn’t rest without jotting a few thoughts into a poem after a whole weekend of no writing. I think sometimes putting our hands to work helps our minds rejuvenate. Today I’m ready to put my nose to the grindstone and get back to making plans, dreaming big, and writing.
 

What are the things that help you rest and refocus?

Mine: cooking and cleaning.

Much love to you on your Monday, friends.