Ha. It's Already Done.

The morning of my wedding, I was awake at 4 a.m. Dreams were not friendly places, and I left bed and went downstairs. I wrote in my journal, and I ate. I had heard enough stories of brides who never got to eat on their wedding day, and I knew friends and family would be asking me, so I ate a bowl of cereal. Even wrote, "I've eaten, so leave me alone!" in the journal entry.

Welcome to the glorious brokenness that is me. Yes, I do right things with wrong motivation. All the time.

I'd like to think I've learned and grown some in the intervening decade or more, but some inner personality bents remain. In a season of life where chaos reigns and my time is more often someone else's rather than mine, I've been fighting for space to write. (My biggest fights, I readily admit, are with myself; writing is not convenient, it's not restful, and only rarely does it feel 'good' while in process or after it's done.) One practical line I could draw was to tell myself I couldn't check facebook before I wrote a blog post for the day.

I hate that I made this rule for myself.

My husband's in bed, my kids are asleep, and it's 'my' time to do restful things before calling it a night. Glancing at the clock, I saw it was after midnight. "If you write a blog post NOW," my creative inner child suggested, "you'd meet the requirement ahead of time. Tomorrow would be free!" (I don't know how my mother avoided strangling me in my younger years. Dealing with this mindset, a 'creativity' toward circumventing rules, is exhausting.)

At the heart of it all, it doesn't matter whether I write a blog entry that rivals a Shakespeare sonnet or a bunch of gibberish on a page. The point is that I believe God gave me a gift that expresses itself through words and phrases. I didn't like practicing for piano lessons all those years ago, and I don't like writing when I make myself write. The time now isn't about production, but about training and reliance. My hours at the piano mean I can close my eyes and still know where my hands are on the keys. Writing regularly means knowing my tools--words, spelling, verbal painting, listening to an inner song--so well that when something DOES need to be said through me... I'll be ready.

My blog entry for May 15th is done, yes; what matters more is I took time in this 24-hour block of time to work on learning my instrument. Perhaps in time my heart will even sing in tune.