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I’ve been thinking a lot about flexibility. Emotional and mental flexibility. The ability to bend under varying pressures without tearing any fibers. Then, like an unexpected flash of lightning on a clear night, I read this by Henri Nouwen (whose spirit has obviously been peeking through the windows of our bus, or the thickly veiled windows of my soul):

“Trees look strong compared with the wild reeds in the field. But when the storm comes the trees are uprooted, whereas the wild reeds, while moved back and forth by the wind, remain rooted and are standing up again when the storm has calmed down.”

“Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may easily be broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of the time while remaining solidly anchored in the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let’s be flexible while being deeply rooted.”

Clinging to my own positions, unwilling to let my heart be moved back and forth even a tiny bit by the ideas and actions of others.

How many times am I humorless? Opinionated? Rigid about current issues?

If there’s one thing I’m learning on this trip, it’s the importance of flexibility. I can be deeply rooted in my decision regarding where our next stop is, but if I’m unwavering in WHEN we’re going to leave or HOW LONG it will take to get there or EXACTLY WHAT TIME we will arrive, the little detours that come up, the innocent diversions, the unlooked for blessings…they all get plowed under by my unrelenting determination. Or even worse, when I try to knock over insurmountable obstacles, I get depressed or angry.

See life through a lens tinted by humor. Hold opinions loosely. Always remember, no matter how difficult it might be to accept, that you could be wrong. Seriously. It’s possible.

Become an emotionally flexible person.

My new e-book, “Building a Life Out of Words,” officially releases on Tuesday, March 27th. For those of you who are mathematically challenged, that’s in 11 days. And I could really use your help to get the word out.

So here are some ways you can help:

1) If you have a blog and are willing to write up a review, I will send you a free PDF copy. Not only that, but if you post the review on Tuesday, March 27th, I’ll put your name into a drawing to win a $100 gift card (that’s big money, right?). Let me know in the comments or shoot me an email (shawnsmucker@yahoo.com) if you’d like to get involved.

2) If you’re on Facebook or Twitter, I plan on hosting a Facebook party as well as a Twitter party during the week of the 27th. How does that work? I’m not exactly sure yet, but stay tuned because if you participate you’ll have the opportunity to win some awesome prizes.

3) Buy the book! It will be available for $3.99 on the Nook, Kindle, or as a PDF.

Thanks to all of you for being such faithful readers. You are so generous in the way you share my posts with your friends as well as encourage Maile and I through your comments and messages. We wouldn’t be enjoying this trip around the country even half as much if it weren’t for your constant input and positive feedback.

 

One month ago we pulled away from my parent’s house in a big blue bus. Everything felt foreign and surreal and very, very exciting, sort of like when I first showed up for junior high looking forward to having my own locker. We drove just under two hours and arrived in Gettysburg unscathed. So began the trip we had always dreamed of taking.

Then an interesting turn of events. Our heavenly visions of cruising the country, listening to Willie Nelson and Tom Petty, the wind blowing through our hair while the children sat in the back learning multiple foreign languages, collided with reality. I got the bus stuck in a ditch. The waste tank was difficult and time consuming to empty. The two youngest kids got sick, and I got stressed out. It was like when the first few weeks of junior high passed and I realized that everything and everyone, including me, was difficult and weird and very, very awkward.

Then came the day, about two weeks into our journey, when we drove into North Carolina. A driving rain caused a steady drip to fall in through the emergency escape hatch and on to the floor in the small hallway. All four kids slept in the back: peace on earth. Maile sat perched in the passenger’s seat, and she turned to me with a strange look on her face.

“This isn’t exactly what we expected, is it?”

I just shook my head. Then I looked at her. We both started laughing.

“If we’re going to keep going,” I said, the words barely escaping through the laughter, “we need a serious attitude adjustment.”

Maile said a little prayer for us right there inside Willy as we flew through that rainy afternoon in North Carolina. A prayer for peace. For chill-outedness. For the wisdom to drop our worry and obsession about tomorrow like the waste we emptied out of the bus every three to four days.

And it kind of worked.

We decided to enjoy each day as it happened. If we only ever looked forward to GETTING THERE, we’d never enjoy HERE. We stopped letting minor obstacles steal our joy. We tried to embrace what Henri Nouwen refers to as the “Here and Now.” It took us two weeks and 1500 miles, but we started catching on.

Then, from the ashes of our worries and the remnants of our stress rose the hint of beautiful things: stunning friendships, the glaring light of opportunity, and that peculiar thing called “a love of adventure.”

The most intriguing part is that nothing has changed. Willie is still Willie. Our kids still occasionally overwhelm us as their energy erupts in this small space. Diesel prices continue to climb. We don’t know where we’re going to live when it’s all over, and I’m still trying to line up some projects for the second half of the year. Nothing has changed.

Yet everything has changed – I found peace in the most unlikeliest of places. Even a place as unique as a forty-foot bus.

Where’s the strangest place you’ve ever found peace?

Online friendships aren’t real relationships…are they?

There’s no substitute for spending real time with someone, face to face…is there?

All these social websites do is give you a superficial glance into someone’s life…don’t they?

* * * * *

The rest of today’s post is over at Inkling Media. To read about my take on the validity of internet friendships, click HERE.

Or, if you’re visiting my blog for the first time, you can learn more about our trip, take a look at the books I’ve written, or find out a little bit about my upcoming e-book, “Building a Life Out of Words.”

In just a few weeks an e-book I’ve written will be available: “Building a Life Out of Words.” Here are three reasons why I’m super excited about its release:

• I get to share the story of my first year making a living as a writer – the projects I worked on, the stress and  joys of being self-employed, and what it was like taking a semi-blind leap of faith into the profession of my dreams.
• It’s my first e-book, and I’m interested to see how people will interact with this new (for me) medium.
• In addition to my own stories, I’ve managed to strong arm the following nine writers into writing a short piece for the book about writing for a living. Some share thoughts on the writing life; others give some practical thoughts on how to make money as a writer. Even if you despise me as a writer and a person, it will totally be worth purchasing the book for their insights. The nine writers are:
  

  AndiCumbo  BryanAllain  EdCyzewski
  JasonBoyett  JeffGoins  JenniferLuitwieler,
  KenMueller  KristinTennant  StacyBarton

Stay tuned for more details regarding the e-book’s official release date. In the mean time, here’s an excerpt for your enjoyment:

* * * * *

The moving truck idled in the short driveway, its back door bulging. Maile was out in our mini-van, parked on the street and pointed in the right direction.  The van she drove, like the moving truck, was stuffed – it looked like the migrant workers’ vehicle from Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, loaded down with food and suitcases and mattresses hanging over the side (minus the mattresses and the deceased Joad grandparent).

We had to shoehorn the four kids into their booster and baby seats. Then we stacked even more things on top of them. The rain started to pour down, and the night seemed very, very dark. Maile’s parents sat in their car, parked behind the minivan, their headlights illuminating the street, their windshield wipers fighting off the weather.

I waved at Mai to wait and ran back through the garage and into the house for one last walk through, just to make sure I had locked all the doors.  My wet shoes slipped and screeched on the hardwood floors.  The stillness in the house seemed surprised at my being there, as if someone new had already moved in and I was no longer welcome.

I walked up through the empty levels. This was the home where we had brought Abra and Sam after they were born. Lucy’s favorite hide-and-seek spot was in that bedroom closet. Cade’s first bus stop was just up the road. Abra had taken her first faltering steps on those slippery hardwoods. And how many times had I made the middle-of-the-night treks down that hallway to retrieve a crying Sam?

I paused, still inside the house. What was God trying to do with our lives?  Why had he brought us to Virginia in the first place – was it just to straddle us with more financial debt, introduce new friends and then uproot us once again?  Why had he, with such seeming felicity, helped us buy this house, only to put us in a position where we had to give it back?

I just didn’t have the answers.  I locked the front door, put all the keys on the kitchen counter, and walked out through the garage, the door dropping down behind me, the light vanishing inch by inch by inch.

It was true what Tolkien wrote in The Fellowship of the Ring – adventures seem wonderful in the daylight, when the weather is good for hiking and the wind is at your back.  But at night, when it’s cold and it starts to rain, memories of sitting in your warm house beside the fire push a kind of dread in on the corners of your heart and make you doubt your fortitude. The reasons for leaving that make so much sense in the light of day hide very well among the nighttime shadows.

I climbed up into that huge moving van and pulled on my seatbelt as the final beams of light from the closing garage door slid down on to the wet street.  The diesel monster grumbled.  We hit the road, soon cruising north on Route 15, roaring towards our new existence.

Our new adventure.

I led the way.  The 26-foot UHaul bounced and heaved like a lunar module, and I could hear some of the contents creak and sway in the back.  The headlights threw a beam into the night, and I followed it north.

Then I remembered a quote that Anne Lamott uses in her book Bird By Bird.  It’s actually a quote by E. L. Doctorow, and it goes something like this:  “writing a novel is like driving a car at night.  You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

I think something started to shift inside of me on that drive.  I began to realize (just a seed of understanding that had a lot of growing to do) that my perspective on this move would shape my entire life.  I could look at this event as a failure, a disaster, and our move as a sort of retreat from the battles of life . . . OR I could see it as an opportunity to try something that I always wanted to try, an opportunity to live out my identity.

I could try to make my living as a writer. I could try to build a life out of words.

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” John Steinbeck

* * * * *

We all struggle to maintain some sense of control over our lives. Some of us attempt this by orchestrating the behavior and activities of our children. Some of us are unhealthy because allowing ourselves that next treat or extra helping is the one thing we feel we can control in our lives. Others of us create rigid, judgmental boundaries defining acceptable behavior – meting out judgment on those who do not reach our lofty standards fills us with a sense of justice and control.

And why not strive for a life in which I am the power broker? Whenever I try to control people or things or circumstances, I do it because I believe that my life will be better if it is predictable, on schedule, and under my control.

But there’s this funny thing about control. It tightens up my life. It’s like a wounded muscle, cramping in on itself to prevent further damage. The more I try to control the people and circumstances around me, the tighter my fist becomes.

This is one of life’s great deceptions. We believe that having more control will lead to greater predictability, which we believe will lead to greater happiness. But the exact opposite is actually the case. In the areas of my life where I have been able to relinquish this desperate desire for control, freedom has crept in. Freedom from judgment. Freedom from worry. Freedom from fear.

And then I realized – this constant striving for control, it was actually controlling me.

What the heck am I talking about? It’s this journey my family and I are on. When I try to control it, I get stomach pains and can’t think straight. When I take it as it comes, allow some flexibility to reside in my mind, the whole thing’s much more enjoyable.

What areas of your life (or someone else’s) are you trying to control, to your detriment? Have you ever been able to relinquish control over something? How did it feel?