I haven’t been able to write lately. I think it’s partially because parenting three teen/tween daughters has humbled me into a place of silence on many issues. The world is so dark and heavy, and I’m unsure how to process or respond to that in helpful ways. And then we also recently moved, which is disorienting and draining for all involved. We like our new place and it’s beginning to feel like home, but I’m a little weary from the shuffle.
It’s easy to feel a sense of overwhelm these days—even in the midst of beautiful October. I get a taste of that overwhelm when I step into our garage and still see rows and rows of boxes. I feel it wash over me every time I turn on the news, open my email, or log into social media. The things happening around us—locally and globally—are loud and messy. I think I’ve let my spirit absorb and reflect much of the chaos and hopelessness of it all.
I know both from experience and from everything I’ve read about community how important it is to prioritize connection. Be it a pandemic or a busy season in our personal life, withdrawal from the people, places, and outlets that make us feel most alive isn’t good for any of us. Yet I do it time and time again as some sort of coping mechanism when life feels unsettled. I have missed writing and thinking. Maybe mostly, I have missed feeling grounded enough to be creative and connected to the world outside my own four walls.
Last night I found a box in a corner of our office that I thought we had lost somewhere along the way in our moves. Inside the tightly packed U-Haul box I re-discovered my grandfather’s hymnal and some old sheet music I had stowed away in our piano bench. Instead of immediately unpacking and sorting the contents, I pulled out two of my favorite songs and fumbled through them on the keyboard.
I’m not one to be mystical or dramatic, but as I played through those familiar melodies something flickered back to life in my spirit. It’s as if the comfort and power of those songs I hold dear from my high school and early college years unleashed a trickling of desire in my head and heart to write again. Something clicked.
Maybe making music is more powerful than I thought.
Maybe creating matters more than I realized.
Maybe connecting is more essential than I assumed.
For just a moment last night, I was reminded that there is still good and important work to be done, no matter how small that work might be, amidst the craziness of life in 2023. And so… here I am. I’m pecking away on my dusty iPad keyboard with a renewed sense of gratitude and hope for the way little flecks of light can counter big swaths of darkness. And here is my prayer for this season:
May God give us the energy to care about creativity and connection and beauty, even when our tendency is to feel tiny and tired and overwhelmed by it all.
May our spirits be revived by things that make us come fully alive because the world needs our presence and attention more than ever.
May we keep lifting our spinning heads and our heavy hearts up to see the light and be the light wherever we find ourselves this fall.
Andrew Peterson writes in Adorning the Dark:
“The burden God places on each of us is to become who we are meant to be. We are most fully ourselves when Christ most fully lives in us and through us. The mother shines brightest with her child in her arms, the father when he forgives his wandering son, and the artist when he or she is drawing attention to grace, by showing the pinprick of light overcoming the darkness in the painting, or the story, or the song. The world knows darkness. Christ came into the world to show us light. I have seen it, have been blinded by it, invaded by it. I will tell its story.”
May it be so.
Leave a Reply