inspired | chatting at the sky

when she speaks

August 2, 2011

It feels like 37 years ago, but I did attend the She Speaks Conference again this year. I was humbled to speak to a room full of women about my journey from writing a blog to writing a book, a phrase that still kind of makes me shudder. Mainly because when you hear “from blog to book” you might be tempted to think that the person who is teaching it values book-writing over blog-writing. And I certainly do not.

I did this session with Andrea Doering, one of the executive editors with Revell Books. She has years of experience in the industry acquiring both fiction and non-fiction titles. She is a professional, and she is a friend. She is also the editor who acquired my book and who I hope to work with for a long time. Do you want to know one of my favorite things she said to this room filled with writers and bloggers at She Speaks? She said this:

“One question bloggers should not ask themselves is, What does it take to get published? If you have a blog, you are already published. People are reading your work. In fact, if you have 2,000 readers, then you already have more readers than 95% of authors who have books in bookstores.”

Andrea and I gave this same talk last year – but last year she didn’t say this. In fact, I said a lot of things this year I didn’t say last year, either. Want to know why? It’s because things are changing, and they’re changing fast. If you have a blog, my suggestion to you is to treat it with respect and make it the best art you have.

But what if you don’t have 2,000 readers? Maybe you have 30 readers. Do you roll your eyes at those 30 readers? Do you think of your work as valuable even if only 30 people read it? Consider this: what if 30 women showed up in a room to hear you speak. Would you see it differently? Would you roll your eyes at them? No way! You would prepare and plan and maybe even get nervous. And you would look forward to meeting with these 30 people who made the effort to show up and listen. Lysa TerKeurst said something similar to that a few years ago and I haven’t forgotten it.

I have a lot more I could share with you about our session at She Speaks and I’m considering doing that next week. Would you want to hear more? What types of things would you like to hear?

Tagged blog, writing Filed Under a writer, inspired 74 Comments

the horrifying thrill of the last 5 percent

July 25, 2011

I’ve been working on Grace for the Good Girl in some form for the last 31 months. There are roughly six weeks before release. I’m in the midst of the last 5-ish percent of the work it takes to get a book from the mind of a writer into the hands of a reader. And if you compare my publishing journey to that of most people, this has been fairly quick.

The first five percent was hard – admitting I had an idea that I couldn’t shake, accepting the fact that writing it down would be the only way to get it to stop hovering, knowing all odds were against me and putting hands to keyboard anyway. I spent a lot of time seeking permission during those days of that first five percent. I looked around for someone to affirm me and tell me to do it so that I could argue with them and tell them all the reasons why I shouldn’t or couldn’t. It was a dizzying cycle, the fear.

Once I finally launched a full out pursuit of the art and passed the first five percent, things got easier. There were writing days that began gray and lonely only to turn out bright yellow and full of hope, word count met, concepts complete. And that’s how it went, up and down for a while, but still within a reasonable, predicable pattern. The 90 percent in the middle wasn’t a breeze by any stretch — but there was momentum.

Until this last five percent. The book is written, edited, titled, covered, margined, page numbered, and finished. All completely finished. But the work? The work is not yet done. Because this last 5 percent of the work is the deep down, gutteral, horrifying, thrilling work of letting it go, releasing it out of my hands and into yours. It is the work of belief, of knowing that the God who created the earth and the heavens still speaks today, and sometimes he speaks through us.

Because as difficult as it is to start, it could be equally as difficult to say that you are finished. I want to hold on to the loose ends. I want the freedom to make it better. I want to manage outcomes and to ensure that all will be well with me. I think I might want to be God a little bit.

It isn’t just in this, is it? The last days before the wedding are hurried and crazy and wild with anticipation; the last month before she moves into her dorm is filled with worry and angst and excitement and tears all stirred together in the pot of a mama’s heart; the finishing up of anything requires a great deal more resolve than you’ve had to dig for yet. But we are told that our times are in the hands of another, that we are loved everlasting, and that He has already made all things well with us. There is great comfort there, and I keep coming back to that.

Tagged art Filed Under a writer, faith, inspired 45 Comments

how to see the future

July 15, 2011

In the middle of his alcoholic days, my dad didn’t go to church with us unless it was a holiday or special occasion. So when my mom, sister and I would leave, this is how he would spend his Sunday mornings.

When they leave for church, I open a beer, read the paper, and crank up the stereo. Sometimes with a few beers in me and the music loud, I stand and talk in a loud whisper. I catch myself acting like a teacher, talking and intellectualizing on things in the news, or politics, or sports, or music, or other things my mind randomly latches onto. Sometimes, in some foggy way, I see myself doing this explaining and persuading out in the future. Then I have another beer. I vacuum and wash the dishes so I don’t feel totally useless. I take a nap. They come home from church. This becomes a normal Sunday morning.

He didn’t know why and he couldn’t explain it. But it was in him to speak out. That was 25 years ago. Today, he is an announcer on the radio. A believer in Jesus. A teacher at church. A mentor to couples. A small group leader.

All my life, characters have been following me around, waiting for a starring role in a story I haven’t yet told. Last week while in South Carolina, there they were again, hiding in the Low Country shadows of the oaks with their mossy-grey profiles. Still, not one of those characters are clear to me. It’s as if I’m surrounded by a smokey cloud of faceless witnesses. The fog is thick with story but I can’t see a thing. And so I wait. It isn’t time to tell their stories yet anyway.

Art does that. Sometimes it follows after you so hard and so loud that you look around to see how everyone else is reacting to this most obvious explosion of creativity happening right here in this room. It is bright and tangible and full. But other times, it speaks of future, not yet things to come. It whispers for us to prepare so that it isn’t so surprising when the story shows up one day, demanding you to tell it or to live it, ready or not. The Spirit of the living, loving God speaks into our lives and offers us shadows of things to come, blurry and unclear. But no less real.

He weaves His art into the very fiber of our being, so close that we can’t not have at least some hint of it, even if we are drowning in addiction, blind to the truth, hardened by unforgiveness, paralyzed with fear. My grandfather was a rather unhappy man in his living days. He was an alcoholic too, but his story didn’t end so well. He stopped drinking only a few years before he died and he never grew into his potential. He encouraged me in my writing as a young girl. I think he may have seen something in me that he recognized in himself but couldn’t quite touch. There were shadows of his design, whispers of his giftedness that I’m sure spoke to him in some way, but his demons drowned them out.

Maybe you are drawn to the people and culture of another country but you can’t explain why. You bring your camera to every wedding because you can’t not take pictures of the bride. You write for free and it should feel like a waste, except that it doesn’t and you don’t have an answer for it. You stare at your living room and imagine ways to make it better, and then you do and it changes your mood. It should be silly, except it isn’t.

And so when you hear the whispers, One day, there will be fiction. Children. Teaching. Speaking. Love. Writing … don’t ignore them. It doesn’t mean that things will turn out exactly as you think. They won’t. But I do believe God fully provides for us in the present while at the same time, faintly hints about the future. And sometimes, as He moves in us and around us in the moments of our day, He nudges us in whispers and desire towards something He has for us later.

It’s why an alcoholic who isn’t even a believer can stand in a room and pretend to teach and not know why. It’s not because he had an idea that he would like to try that out one day. It’s because teaching was woven into the fiber of his being when he was knit together in his mother’s womb. We — a people with a full capacity to love and learn and teach and create and live — we did not just happen. We were made by design, and that design is held together by a Person. And his intention for us is beautiful, hopeful, and filled with delight.

What are the whispers of design saying to you today?

Filed Under inspired 71 Comments

the importance of staying small

July 10, 2011

There is a map of the world hanging in an office some 9,000 miles away from my front door. At first glance, it looks as though the continents are in the wrong place. But after a bit of study, you realize it isn’t wrong at all, but simply drawn from another perspective. Standing in the Compassion International office in Manila, Philippines, our team stared hard at that map. And seeing Asia in the middle with North and South America shifted way to the right didn’t cause one entitled huff or puff. Instead, our entire team breathed a collective sigh of relief.

I’ve thought of that moment a lot, wondered why we all had the same reaction to that map in that moment. Perhaps it’s because traveling the world helps you realize you aren’t the center of it. And there is a great relief in remembering that it isn’t all about us.

My dad used to watch our kids as toddlers and say under his breath, We teach them when they’re babies that they’re center of the world, and they spend the rest of their lives realizing they’re not. It’s true, we do it. We have to tend to them as though their world depends on it, because it does. They are so small. But so are we.

Still, we spend a lot of time working hard to keep our world spinning ’round–write the proposal, plan the meal, pick up the girls, deliver the brownies, ask him the questions, give them attention, and on it goes. We have to do these things, as they are our living, our livelihood, our art. But our living and our art can quickly cross over into our burdens even as we will them not to.

Instead of living and loving out of a place of fullness, we grasp for meaning and worth out of a place of need. Call me important! Tell me I matter! our actions cry out. There is a voice that whispers, You are and you do, but not because of all this activity.

Celebrate your smallness today. Lay back on the wide green earth and let the world spin the sun right up above you. And breathe a sigh of sweet relief as you realize you had nothing to do with it.

Tagged art, rest Filed Under inspired 63 Comments

10 ways to make art in less than an hour

June 21, 2011

Find that extra hour or two in the day that belongs to nobody else but you and make it productive. Put the hours in, do it for long enough, and magical, life-transforming things happen eventually.

-Hugh MacLeod, from Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity

It’s summer now, and these slower days bring pool bags filled with watermelon, vacations, wet bathing suits, and lots of children. And we love to be with them, to have less structure, to do the pool and the beach and the lazy days thing. But we can’t help but wander into the still, quiet places of our imaginations. We can’t help but long for shreds of alone sometimes.

We tend to think we have to have weeks to re-charge, endless open days to plan and prepare, a retreat to re-center and re-focus. Those things will help, for sure. And if you get them, soak them up and roll around in the blessing of them. But most of us don’t have the luxury of wide open days or weekend retreats on any type of regular basis.

So what’s the alternative? Never write the book? Never plan the proposal? Never paint the living room? Ignore the artist voice?

What do we do when all the time we get is in whatever drops are leftover after wringing out the day? I wouldn’t write this if I didn’t believe it, but Hugh McLeod is right: magic happens when we take those drops and begin to fill the bucket. Or in his words, put the hours in, keep doing it, and magic happens. At first the bucket looks empty and I’m tempted to think nothing is happening. But that would be a mistake, because every drop saved is one drop closer to full. Here are some ways to fill the bucket in less than an hour.

Find the drops from your wrung-out day. Launch a relentless pursuit of the art.

Write for 30 minutes. It is not a waste of time.

Take a walk with your camera and see what you can find.

Dare to believe you have something to say but remember it’s because He said it first.

Sit in the quiet just because. A lot more may happen there than you might think.

Savor the moments to talk through the dreams, to sift through the disappointment, to pray for the miracle.

Do the work you love when the early morning lifts up her head with a smile and a high-pitched song.

Sit at the table and make your art when the evening sky fills up the yard right outside your window.

Don’t do it because you have to. Do it because you can.

Then? Open wide your eyes and see what happens. It may be the littlest things that change a life, and the magic is in the details.

Filed Under inspired 64 Comments

the artist’s secret

June 14, 2011

“In art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.”

-Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water

When my friend Melissa lost her mom to cancer, she says she didn’t cry much if at all. She couldn’t find the emotion to go along with the heartbreak of losing her mom. She couldn’t reach it, grab hold of it, and move it up to the surface. It was too deep. And so it came as a great surprise to her when she discovered herself in a heap of blubbering, slobbery emotion during You’ve Got Mail. You mean to tell me she could easily find tears to mourn the last days of the Shop Around the Corner but she could not manage to locate them for her mother?

image source

Yes. That is it exactly. And Madeleine L’Engle puts into words that very simple truth of being human — art makes it possible for us to remember, both the beauty and the banal, the lovely and the loss. Art numbs the wound just enough for us to be able to access the source of it, to reach down into the depths and pull it up to examine.

The beauty of art is that it separates us enough from our own pain in order to make it safe to approach. This movie, this novel, this musical, this song isn’t my story, and so I can freely let myself identify with it. And in the freedom, the tears have permission to fall. And in the tear-fall, I realize that this movie, this novel, this musical, this song holds pieces of my story after all.

Art is a gift, and the artist’s secret is that she carries in her hands the tools of a healer. You might think just the opposite, think you have nothing to share until you are whole and well and put together. We may admire your wholeness, but we can touch your brokenness. Are you still trying to talk yourself out of your art? Please don’t. We, a broken and hurting people, so desperately need it.

Tagged art Filed Under inspired 45 Comments

the colorful mess of joy and grief

June 8, 2011

I’m sure you would expect this post to be coming next. I’m busy doing all the regular things: washing the clothes, planning the meals, counting the days ’til the last day of school. I’m also doing some not-so-regular things: caring for family members who aren’t well, preparing our guest room for a last minute visit, comforting our girl over some unexplained anxiety. All the while, there is a cloud of sadness that I can’t explain, but I understand.

And I’m learning, again, what it means to abide in Christ in the midst of the same and the not-so-same. I’m thinking of them and of us and of all the land and water in between. I’m shocked at my ability to compartmentalize. I grieve it. And yet, I question if that’s what this is. People here need me, and so I carry on. But I do not forget. This foggy sadness tells me so. Music helps a little. Prayer helps more. I wash the dishes and whisper short pleas, small longings, and lots of questions into the silence.

As I continue to process, I’m sharing with you a little piece of happy today. These photos are from the wedding I shot before I left for the Philippines. You know, the I-can’t-hold-it-together-so-I’ll-just-pray-over-the-SD-cards wedding? That one.

I look at her lovely face, at the way the light hits her just so, and I think of new beginnings, of life just starting and keeping on, of a God who offers hope and a future. I think of every good gift coming down from the Father of the Heavenly lights, and how marriage is a good gift.

I think of the posts I’ve written on art, over 40 of them by now, and I consider how pursuing our art in some ways feels extravagant when you consider the mother living from meal to meal in a one room shack.

But we don’t stop living simply because others live hard. Seeing them could shut us down if we let it. Or it could open us up. It is not for us to feel bad about where we live, what we were born into, what we have been given. But it is for us to reconsider the gifts, that perhaps they are just that: gifts. Not entitled, not owed, not earned. But gifts.

They have gifts too, ones called grace and mercy and forgiveness and love. Sometimes those of us who have much have to dig through all our provisions to find peace and contentment sitting small in the bottom of the bucket instead of holding grace with simple hands, embracing the nothing, and feasting on Jesus.

Life keeps right on, and we celebrate because there is much to celebrate. We swallow down joy in big, breathless gulps. We must. And then, we grieve when it all gets to be too much, and that is as it should be.

But if the grieving begins to linger too long, it can be good to circle around to the gifts again; to whisper thanks, to receive the blessing, and to turn ourselves outward. Grief closes us in. Gifts spin us around to thankful, and thankful opens us wide for the giving.

I have to keep coming back to that, the life raft of thankfulness. I have to believe in a God who knows things that I don’t, in a faith that is bigger than the shadows it casts, in the simple beauty of life–even when it’s hard. And I pray with open hands for the Lord to use the art of words and pictures to spin you and I back around to His goodness, ready to give however He may ask.

Filed Under a photographer, Compassion Philippines, inspired 59 Comments