I bought him a Hohner Harmonica in G for his birthday with a harp-holder so that he could play it as he strums his guitar, just like Neil Young. He was thrilled with the gift, and I know this because the thing has barely left his lips since he got it. A few days ago I found him standing over the sink doing dishes and practicing “Heart of Gold” at the same time.

It dawns on me, even as I sneak off to the bathroom to escape the shrill tones of a song I can’t recognize, how lucky I am to be married to someone who is so unabashedly passionate about his art.

I am so often self-conscious about my work, afraid of revealing any underdeveloped idea, that I forget that the best way to really learn something is to play it till you know it in your bones, and take joy in the practice of creating.

The new year began in two ways : one with the ball drop and celebration and champagne, and the other in the box of belongings and memory of a morning one year ago when her breath slipped away and life as I knew it was over.

The symbolism isn’t lost on me – this beginning and ending so close together, this cycle of saying goodbye and starting anew. Life and death and life.

—

On my morning commute I called my grandmother, just like I have each weekday morning since last January. We talked about all the everyday things – the chicken casserole she had made for dinner the night before, an update on how my aunt is feeling since her surgery in July, news from far flung family, a funny memory or two, and then, mom. We don’t talk about it every day, but it’s always there. When we do say it out loud, it’s a gift. Time slows down for me in that moment – I know it took a lot for her to say it, this precious, painful, oft unspoken piece of her life story.

She is the mother of my mother, I am the daughter of her daughter. She is a mother to me and I am a daughter to her in a strange, tight, eternal bond that both of us cling to with ineffable gratitude.

Just before we hung up and went about our days she said something, and I can’t forget it.

“It’s like… we’ve come full circle to another year, and we’ve survived all these firsts and we’re tired. But the circle doesn’t end, it starts over again. I just can’t believe it. It’s hard… but it’s good, you know.”

—

I got a tattoo on the anniversary of mom’s death, the words of our favorite hymn scrawled like a bracelet around my arm, a circle of sorts. A reminder as I run my finger along the cracked skin of this scar as it heals :

Great is Thy Faithfulness. I am changed. Great is Thy Faithfulness.

—

I have to tell my story this year, in more ways than one, and with more words than the sum of all those I have poured out before. Some of my words will land in ink and paper, some in different corners of the internet, some on the cutting room floor.

Today, all of it feels fragmented and unfinished. I hesitate to plunge back into the memories again, to the death and the hurt and the pain. And I hesitate in this beginning of a new – another – year. I hesitate to watch the calendar and the seasons turn, toward every anniversary of the whole experience.

Maybe it’s because I worry sometimes that this is the only story I have to tell – sadness and loss. Grief. Is that all there is for me?

But I see in the circle that every end is its own beginning, and that’s His faithfulness in this story.

I can plunge into the depths, knowing that life will come from it. From telling my story comes life for someone else’s story. Grace abounds. The cup overflows. I find blessing in that. Great is Thy Faithfulness.

It is a surprise to me, even now, that I can say that of grief and mean it.

It’s early morning, December 31, 2012. I’ve waved goodbye to good friends that came to stay with us last night and I’ve had two cups of coffee already. I’ve just finished the first chapter in ‘Help Thanks Wow,’ which turns out is half the book, and Anne’s words are like a balm on my scabbed heart. It stings a little, all this talk about asking for ‘Help,’ but at the same time, this whole morning is a miracle and I know it in the sorest places of my soul. I soak it in quietly, and like turning the page to a new chapter on printed page and in life, I utter a profound, teary ‘Thanks.’

This is the Help I’ve been asking for – this mug, this morning, this time spent with friends who have saved my life in a hard year. I look back on 2012 and see all of it, the hurt and the Help, over and over. The grief and the Grace, in all its forms. I am so grateful.

A lot of Change took place in 2012. I was given several opportunities to share my writing on larger platforms like Prodigal Mag and RELEVANT, I discovered a life-giving community of other writers and bloggers, I made the move to a new blog space and attended STORY Conference.

My husband has a full-time job for the first time ever and we’ve finally found a church community that we can invest in – both of which are enormous answers to our many desperate pleas for Help over the past five years.

My family has survived this strange new life without my mom, and we had a wonderful Christmas together – strange and sad moments notwithstanding – and in some ways, that is the most radical miracle I can think of.

There were other changes too, internally speaking. Grief, I warn you, is a fickle thing. One day I would have the energy to write 2,000 words and clean my apartment and roast a whole chicken. The next, I was going home from work early to read old journal entries and cry myself to sleep. There were days when I was ambitious and accomplished, and whole stretches of time when I was burnt out, uninspired, pissed off at the world. Sometimes I am truly grateful for my grief, for the way that it has woken me up to life, for the words it gives me and the Grace that it reveals. Sometimes I hate grief, and hate myself for it, and I hate everyone else who doesn’t have to deal with it.

The whole experience, every begrudging, blessed part of it, is changing me, teaching me to slow down, helping me to seek the Change that really matters, which is Grace. Grace for my hyper-vigilant, over-ambitious, work-in-progress self. Grace for all the change taking place in others.

I realized last night as the four of us talked – Matt, Ally, Darrell, and I – that I haven’t given much thought to what 2013 will be.

That’s okay, honestly. It doesn’t matter how many plans I make or arbitrary resolutions I conjure up; it will all turn out differently than I imagine.

So if my One Word for 2012 was Change, I want my One Word for 2013 to be Faithful.

I have some big opportunities coming in 2013, ones that I know of for sure, and ones I can’t see yet. No matter which way the pendulum swings and what happens in my life over the next year, I want to be faithful. I want to be faithful to the Change that is always at work in our lives, to the Grace that keeps showing up in the midst of our grief, to the Help that answers all our hurt.

I want to be faithful to His faithfulness in me.

What do you hope for in 2013? What is your One Word for the year, and why?

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When the worst things happen, I become a yo-yo of emotions – sorrow and joy, anxiety and peace, chaos and quiet. I have a million words, and at the same time, none at all. That’s how the empty numbness sets in : when I feel all of it at once and don’t know what to do with it.

I suppose this is why I find comfort in cooking; it puts my heart in a place of utter quiet when my writer mind is mad with the world. I want more than anything to bring all the hurt close to me and heal it. I want to put your fear, my fear, everybody’s fear, at ease. I can’t though, and so I make a table for anyone who is close enough to sit with me, and I bring to it the very best I can, with the elaborate simplicity of a good meal.

A whole roasted chicken stuffed with fresh orange and rosemary, the creamiest mashed potatoes I’ve ever made, a glass of Merlot to go with it.

And grace, always Grace :

Let’s light a candle for the lonely and brokenhearted flung far from us this night. Let’s say a prayer for peace.

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Hello, dear readers. My friend Allison Vesterfelt are guest-post swapping today! Ally just turned in the manuscript for her memoir, “Packing Light,” so her post for you is about the process of writing through her story. Are any of you working on memoirs or writing a book, or just thinking about how to live a better story? Share your thoughts with us, and be sure to check out my post for Ally’s blog, “‘Comfort and Joy’ in a Season of Grief.” 

Writing My First Book: Packing Light, A Guide To Living Life with Less Baggage

From the time the idea first came to me, to the time Packing Light is published in September, 2013, at least three years will have passed.

It’s been a long time coming.

The wait has been long and the learning curve has been steep, and like all those who have scaled steep learning curves, I bear the scars of climbing to the top, and then tumbling tired down the other side. For first-time writers who hope that what’s in their heart will someday be on paper, I thought I’d share a little bit about my experience.

Living your story.

Before you can ever write your story, you have to live your story. For me this meant going on a road trip where I visited all 50 states (48 by car, 2 by airplane). For you it will be something different.

Living your story gives it the meat you need to tell it well. You can’t skip this part.

Before I left home on my trip, I thought I knew what I was going to write about. I already had the title in mind, and I figured the people I met along the way, and the experiences I had, were just adding icing to the already delicious cake. But I was wrong.

I didn’t even know what “Packing Light” meant before I left home.

I had no idea how hard it was, or how important.

My road trip didn’t alter the direction of my book, it was the direction of my book. You can’t write something before you live it. Don’t ever forget that you are the walking, breathing, living manifestation of your message.

Down time.

As if the logistics of executing a 50-state road trip weren’t complicated enough, coming home to write the manuscript was worse. I had the hardest time choosing what stories to include, and what to leave out.

I would sit at my computer screen, paralyzed, terrified that — after all this — I would never write my book.

These were some of the most depressing days of my journey because, after all that happened, sometimes it felt like I had nothing to say.

How could I have nothing to say?

But what I found was that, as I let the experiences and ideas sit and simmer together in the reality of everyday life, the most important stuff started to float to the surface.

Sometimes waiting, as difficult as it is, is our best friend.

Waiting for a publisher.

There was also this inclination I had to wait for a publisher to pick up my proposal before I would begin writing. I even had several people urge me in this direction. “You don’t want to start writing the manuscript until a publisher approves your project,” they would say.

I think they were trying to protect me from unnecessary extra work.

But in retrospect, I can see how I wasn’t waiting for a publisher to approve my project, I was waiting for a publisher to approve me, as a writer. It was like I needed someone else to affirm that I was going in the right direction.

Do you need affirmation to get started? Here let me give it to you.

You have a good idea.

No one else has it. If you don’t write it. Who will?

The Routine.

For me, writing involves this strange balance of routine and spontaneity. Since I work from home, my schedule changes everyday, so I just decided that I was going to write for two hours, everyday, first thing in the morning.

I would wake up at 5:00am, before there were any other distractions, and write.

I set my timer for an hour at a time.

I promised myself I wouldn’t get up until the timer went off.

Some mornings I wrote 200 words, some I wrote 3000, and some I spent most of my time just staring at my computer screen.

Finding Healing.

Healing comes simultaneous to writing, if we let it.

As I began to write the manuscript, I started to see things that happened on the road trip in a brand new way. It was like I was watching someone else live through what I experienced.

I had a zoomed-out, 180-degree perspective.

I didn’t have to have all the answers before I started writing, or know what was important to include or leave out, I just had write. I just had to start putting words on paper.

And, as I wrote, healing started to come.

Sometimes we try to force healing before we write, and our words come across stilted and dishonest. Or, instead of writing healing words, we just write mean words about people who are different than us.

But good writing changes us as much as it changes our reader.

Put your back in to it.

Don’t think you’ll walk away unscathed from writing a book. Writing takes hard work, just like anything worth doing. Be prepared to bear the emotional and physical scars of it.

During the process of writing, I developed a back injury.

I know it sounds stupid. Who injures themselves while writing? But I guess it must have been from the hunched over position where I found myself every morning, frantically trying to get my thoughts on paper.

To me the injury is more symbolic than anything. If you want to do something important, you’re going to have to put your back into it.

What about you? What’s the most important thing you’ve written? Will you share your experience?

~

 Allison is a blogger, writer and thinker who is becoming brave enough to live and tell the truth. She’s passionate about helping people to tell, hear and understand stories that inspire, uplift, encourage, and even convict by pointing to the truth of Jesus. She writes a column, “Packing Light” for Prodigal Magazine, which she and her husband Darrell own and manage. The Vesterfelts live in Minneapolis, MN.