After a long day of traveling, I crawled into bed and worked on my laptop for a bit while Maile dropped immediately into a deep sleep. We had gotten up at 4am, left NC at 5:30. Our alternator in the Suburban went out at 8am, so we waited while that was fixed, ate breakfast at a neighboring diner, and tried not to think about how much it was going to cost. Right before Christmas.
After finally getting home nearly 12 hours after we left, unpacking, grocery shopping, feeding the kids, getting them ready for school, and trying to keep everyone from trashing the joint in case we had another showing come up, we arrived at the end of the day. I read a little Conroy until my eyelids got heavy, closed the book, and that’s when the panic hit.
Who knows where these things come from? Who knows what strange combination of synapses fire to send you down the path of worry, melancholy, or homesickness? How can we scientifically explain this experience of being human? Suddenly, I realized my fourteen-year-old son would be leaving the house in less than five years. I know how fast five years can go. I thought of his easy-going personality, his constant desire to make us laugh, his never-ending tales of Minecraft or football or the latest book he’s been reading. And I thought about that not being in my life. And I panicked.
Have I been a good enough dad? Have I done enough special things with him? Am I giving him the tools he needs to be a good human?
It was a visceral sensation in my gut. I glanced over at Maile. She was asleep, the covers pulled up to her eyeballs, dead to the world. I slid out of bed. I decided I’d go to his room and hang out, sit on his floor as I sometimes do and just listen. He loves that. He can talk and talk, and we rarely have one-one-one time in this house of eight.
I walked down the hall to his room, expecting to find him reading a book or squeaking out some last-minute homework. I peeked into the room. He was asleep, a book beside him on his bed. I guess it had been a long day for him, too.
I stared down at his face. I pulled the covers up. I put his book on the shelf and my hand stayed on it for a moment as I looked at him again, remembering the smile he had when he was a baby.
I’m such a sap.
The house was quiet, and I followed the quiet downstairs, turned out the lights our daughter always leaves on after she showers. I double-checked the locks, hit the hall light, and slipped back into bed beside Maile. These years? They’re actually minutes. Seconds. I blink, and here I am, 40 years old. This is it. This is life.
If you’re looking for a gift for a young (or young at heart) reader in your life, consider my book The Day the Angels Fell, described by Anne Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy as, “Neil Gaiman meets Madeleine L’Engle.”
We sit in a small circle in the living room, some on chairs, some on the floor, and for a moment it is easy to believe that nothing will ever change. That old illusion. Lucy plays her guitar – Coldplay’s “Fix You,” Jon Foreman’s “The Cure For Pain” – and we are transfixed. Without fail, when she plays the guitar, I find tears taking root in the dark corners of myself, the spaces easily ignored during most of this over-busy life of mine.
And here tonight while the stars are blacking out With every hope and dream I’ve ever had in doubt I’ve spent ten years trying to sing these doubts away But the water keeps on falling from my eyes*
It is the end of a three-week journey for our family, from Pennsylvania to Florida to North Carolina, mile after paved mile. Now, it is Sunday night, and on Monday (while you’re reading this) we will drive north, complete the great circle, return to normal life. Only it is not normal, because our house in on the market, most of our things in boxes, and suddenly we don’t know where we might be living next month, next year. Suddenly, a crossroads.
“Can you play a Christmas song?” someone asks, and I wish we could go on like this forever. Forever. Music and listening and meandering off into the sound of my oldest daughter’s voice. Lucy gives a few options. We choose “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” and she sings it slower than usual, soulful, and we join in. I look over at our Auntie, here from Hawaii for Thanksgiving, singing along. Her life is one that is indescribable, a story of perseverance the like you may have never heard before, and yet there she sits in my in-laws’ living room, a peaceful presence. Our voices rise together.
Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore.
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more.
Lucy picks the last note on her guitar, and it hangs in the air until the silence reaches up and plucks it down like ripe fruit. Monday morning we will pile into the packed car, hopefully by 5am, and begin the trek north, into the cold, into the unknown, into the future. We sigh, none of us knowing we had been holding our breath. I think again of the last lines of Foreman’s song.
And heaven knows… heaven knows I tried to find a cure for the pain Oh my Lord, to suffer like you do… It would be a lie to run away A lie to run It would be a lie It would be a lie to run away*
Sometimes it can be almost impossible to tell the difference between running and running away.
*From Jon Foreman’s song, “The Cure For Pain”
If you’re looking for a gift for a young (or young at heart) reader in your life, check out my book The Day the Angels Fell, described by Anne Bogel at Modern Mrs. Darcy as, “Neil Gaiman meets Madeleine L’Engle. I read it in two days!”
Today’s post is brought to you by my good friend Andi Cumbo-Floyd in celebration of the release of her book, Love Letters to Writers.
When I would get sick as a child, Mom would make a bed for me on the couch: my pillow, my favorite blanket, a rare treat of clear soda nearby, a bowl just in case. Then, she’d turn on the TV – which was never on in our house during the day – and leave me to doze and watch Bob Barker.
Every once in a while, she’d come over and lay her long, cool fingers against my forehead to see how my fever was. Sometimes, I’d be half-asleep, but I’d feel her hand on my face and instantly slide deeper. Her skin bore comfort.
I think of those couch beds, the plastic cups of Sprite, and Mom’s hands often, especially when life feels like it’s infecting me with the illness of over-busy and too much to do. At this moment in my life, I feel that infection sliding into my lungs as I finish up book revisions for a publisher and launch my new book, Love Letters to Writers. Some days, I just want Mom to give me permission to lay on the couch with my pillow and doze through the hours.
But Mom died 7 years ago, and so she is not here to give me that permission or to lay a cool hand of grace on my forehead when the fever of doing becomes too much. Instead, I have had to learn to give myself permission to rest, to step back, to step out.
This lesson of rest, perhaps more than any other I’ve learned in my writing life, is the hardest because there’s always more to do. Always another way to promote. Always another guest blog post I could write. Always another idea I could explore. Always another book to draft.
The further I get into years of living life as a writer the more I realize that this is steady quest, not a quick sprint. What I give to frenzy and frantic, I do not have to give to play and questions. So I have learned to slow down, to write some words every day but not all day, to set out a few things to try for a book launch but not everything, to trust that in the end the balance of rest and work will come anew each day.
I ache to feel my mother’s hands on my forehead again, but until the day I can, I give thanks that she taught me to rest and heal in a world that most often recommends a never-ending hurtle toward forever.
Andi Cumbo-Floyd is a writer, editor, and farmer, who lives at the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband, four dogs, four cats, six goats, three rabbits, and thirty-six chickens. Her newest book Love Letters to Writers: Accountability, Encouragement, and Truth-Telling has just been released.
I’ll start by telling you that I have co-written somewhere around 20 books with various people. Sometimes these books are independently published and sometimes they are brought into the world through publishing houses. But in every case, as soon as I sign a contract, I become gripped by a terrifying fear that I will not be able to write the book the person is looking for.
These are the negative voices in my head. We all have them. Mine live in covered fifty-gallon drums, some of which are all rusted out while others are marked with radioactive symbols, ooze leaking out around the base. I’m usually able to press…the…voices…down…into…the…barrel by all means of distraction and positive self-talk and strength of will, but as soon as I sign a new contract, as soon as I start writing another book, the voices begin clamoring, their little fingers reaching out from under the barrel lids, trying to escape.
“You’re a pretender!” they shout. “You’re not much of a writer! And even if you were, you wouldn’t be able to write the book this person wants! Good luck, idiot!”
They’re not very nice. Sometimes, I’m a little rough with them when I try to close the lids. No one’s perfect.
Before the ink is dry on the contract, before I’ve scanned it and mailed it back to the client or the publisher, I begin questioning my vocation. Why do I write? Wouldn’t life be easier if I delivered newspapers or neutered cats or pumped sewage tanks for a living? Maybe I could work at the post office – I’ve heard they have great benefits. If that didn’t work out, I could donate my plasma, sell a kidney.
But I keep writing. I’m not good for much else, to be quite honest. I’m barely employable. And I eat way too much sugar for anyone to be seriously interested in my organs.
______
A few months ago, I sent in a three-chapter writing sample for a new project to both the wonderful client and the editor I’m working with. As soon as I hit send, the voices filled my head with the same old din, and I ran around from barrel to barrel, stuffing them in, trying to find something to seal the lids. Something heavy. A few days went by, and when I didn’t get any feedback, I stopped even trying to quiet the voices – I sat down among the barrels and bathed in the self-criticism, the self-doubt. I figured I might as well start brushing up my resume. Maybe I shouldn’t have deleted my LinkedIn account? Maybe I should start shopping for decent job interview clothes? I have nothing nice to wear. This writing-for-a-living thing means I rarely make it out of my pajamas.
I finally heard back. The client loved loved loved one of the three chapters I wrote. It made her and her entire team cry when she read it out loud to them. But I sensed some hesitancy about the other chapters. The editor said, “I like so much of what I see…The chapters here are solid, but they should come later in the book, after the reader is already invested in your journey.”
So, of course, I was devastated.
For clarification: this is not negative feedback. This is valuable feedback! This is positive feedback! But can I be honest? As a writer, even after writing this many books and working with this many editors, I still have an unreasonable desire – I want my first draft to knock everyone over. I want people to read my first drafts and fall backward, exclaiming something along the lines of, “This is the best thing I’ve ever read please do not change a single word or you will diminish the awesomeness you have created.”
This is not realistic. This is not ever going to happen. Never. Not ever. The first draft of any created thing can always be improved upon.
Ten years ago, when I got a similar response from an editor, it plunged me into a despair so crippling that I could not hear what she was actually saying, I could not move forward, and the project stalled. I took the feedback she gave, not as a way to improve the manuscript, but as personal criticism and reasons that what I had written was not, and evidence that I would never be, good enough.
Thankfully, I am not that writer anymore. This time, after I got their feedback, I went for a drive. I thought about what the editor said. I knew she was right, and I had felt it even when I submitted the chapters – that was one of the voices I should have listened to, but sometimes they’re so difficult to differentiate between, the helpful voices and the mean ones. I attacked those three chapters and started the book at a different spot, taking into account her suggestions. Recently, I submitted a third (or fourth?) draft of the manuscript, and I heard the golden words from my client: “I really love this manuscript.”
______
Can I tell you what I am learning?
When you don’t get something right the first time, it doesn’t mean you’re terrible at what you do – it means you’re a human being who is in the act of creating something.
When someone offers criticism that is genuinely meant to help you and improve your work, accept it. Listen to what they’re saying and not the translation you’re getting from the voices in your head.
Understand and accept that your first shot at anything will never be your best effort. This may include (but is not limited to) parenting your child, nurturing a relationship, applying for a job, doing your job, starting a business, or, yes, writing a book.
If you want to be a writer, you have to realize, contrary to all appearances, you are not engaging in a solitary undertaking. Bring trusted people along. Let them speak into what you’re creating.
Revision is your best friend, even better than the one who watches The Bachelor with you or knows you secretly still listen to Britney Spears on road trips.
______
I walk quietly in the field of 50-gallon drums. As I get older, I realize the voices are me, the voices come out of some long-ago hurt or praise or experience. I pat the lids gently, remembering the little boy who lived through the experience that birthed each particular voice.
I keep walking, to the hill beyond the field, the hill that holds a solitary tree at the top. I walk up the hill and take out a notebook and sit down, my back against the tree.
I look at the words in the notebook, a story I started long ago. I read it again, from the beginning.
I love introducing you to my writer friends who are bringing beautiful, important books into the world. This book is by my friend Kaitlin Curtice, and it’s one you’ll want to check out. Kaitlin is a fantastic writer and a wonderful person, and I’m honored to have her writing here at the blog today – please feel free to ask her a question about the book in the comments.
As children, our worlds revolve around what we can do with our imaginations.
As we get older, we lose that ability little by little.
We begin to see the darker side of things, the broken side. We begin to wonder what’s good and what’s bad.
And by the time we’re adults, we’ve forgotten what it means to let the wonders of the world call us back to themselves again, back to glory.
I’ve thought and dreamt a lot about what this book will give to the world, what I want its legacy to be years down the road.
What I know right now is that we have plenty of things to worry about. We have plenty of brokenness around us—in our nation, in our world—and it’s not possible to always hold on to that childlikeness. It’s not possible to shut out the news, not completely, and so we carry with us the whole world, it seems.
So I want this book to enter the world as a breath.
The definition of glory is something that is extremely beautiful, and in Glory Happening I share eight ways that glory has shown itself in my life.
I believe this is what we need today, in the midst of everything. We need space to breathe and we need to tether ourselves to everyday goodness. Glory.
Even in the midst of pain, we find it. We find it in our labors, in our regrets, in our stretching and waiting and searching. We find it in small moments and in momentous ones.
One of my favorite stories in the book is about a woman my five-year-old son introduced me to at the market. She was an older Muslim woman from India who wore a hijab around her hair. When my son complimented her, she decided to offer a hijab to me, his mother.
A week or two later, I had a brand new hijab and bracelet to match. It hangs in my dining room today, to remind us that everyone is welcome and expected to be welcomed to our table.
The prayer that goes along with this story is one said by someone who wants to remember these kinds of spaces, who wants to sit in glory because it literally tethers us to God in a world that is tired and desperately trying to find God:
O God,
In these corners of our lives, speak.
These days, govern and pour
out the gift of your truth
over our daily lives,
so that when this
is over and done with,
we are still there with you,
still surrounded by Christ-grace
and Spirit-breath
and God-provision.
Hallelujah, for where we are now
and where we’ll be tomorrow.
Amen.
You can pre-order my book now, and I hope that you do. I hope that you make space for my stories to enter your home, your workplace, the coffee shop that you frequent. I hope you let my stories call your own stories to the surface, so that together we can say that in all of the chaos that was yesterday and is today and will be tomorrow, we are tethered here– together.
Hallelujah and Amen.
Preorders are super important to helping a book get off to a good start, so if you’re remotely interested in finding out more about Kaitlin’s book, please preorder it today!
I don’t know exactly when I forgot this, but yesterday I remembered: memories carry a certain weight, the kind that presses in around the temples, heavy like an x-ray apron on the chest. Like a subtle strain of asthma, they can constrict the breathing, even slow down time.
Walking into my childhood elementary school yesterday felt like walking into a cathedral, one with walls covered in the scribbles of children, the paintings of preteens. The memories were unexpected, heavy. Those long, familiar halls were quiet. I could have sat down and listened, sat there for thirty minutes and let every memory speak to me, but that definitely would have been weird. I probably would have been escorted from the premises.
Instead, I walked to the old fifth grade wing, gave two short talks on being an author in what used to be the art room. 29 years ago, yes, 29 years ago, I sat in that room and tried, very unsuccessfully, to draw the red barn across the street, the red barn that is still there, smirking at me. I once, in that very room, made a paper mache underwater scene of a person being eaten by a shark.
While I spoke to the students, I tried pushing away the memories of playing four square and kickball and freeze tag just outside those windows. I tried ignoring the voices reminding me of my three best friends and baseball practice after school (my team wore orange uniforms sponsored by Lengacher’s Cheese) and the time the creek flooded and we went home early. You know, in those days, if you had early dismissal, your parents didn’t know about it. There was no automated call, no email advisory. If you had an unexpected early dismissal, you just showed up at home, startling your mother.
I tried to tell the kids what it is like being a writer, an author, what it’s like telling stories for a living, mine and other people’s.
“If you want to be a writer when you get older, write a little every day,” I said. “And finish what you start.” And also don’t forget about shitty first drafts, which is something I did not tell them, but hopefully someone will soon, when they’re ready for saltier language.
I drove home through those same old farmers’ fields, headed back towards the city. The Amish were baling their alfalfa, slowly, methodically, the way most harvests, including words, should be brought in. I remembered every small bridge, every stream I crossed. I knew where the fishing holes were, where you could cross without getting your rolled-up jeans soiled with muddy creek water. I remember the fields that kept the cows and the one that held the bull, the one we ran through as if our life depended on it.
Where does this longing come from, this longing only memories can bring? Is it a wish to revisit the past? Is it a desire to be at a point in time where you know what will happen next? Is it that time filters out the filthy grounds and leaves only the flavor?
The city rose in front of me, and then our row home. I walked in to my current life, a life I love. But I was also reminded of this: memories will cling to you like burrs, and you have to pick them off, one by one. I spent all night doing that. It was not a wasted evening.
