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And This is Why You Should Not Give Up

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Maile and I sat at a table outside the cafe, enjoying brunch together. The four oldest kids were at my parents’ house, and Leo sat quietly in his stroller, wearing his mustachifier (a pacifier with a huge mustache on it), gathering laughs from nearly everyone walking by.

It’s a rare moment these days, when the noise and busyness subsides and Maile and I can look at each other and really see.

“It’s hard to believe,” a kind old man said as he walked by, looking at Leo. “It’s hard to believe all of us were that small at one point.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s hard to believe.”

And more people walked by and Maile and I talked about life and writing and schooling the kids. We ate nice food and we sat quietly and the trees that lined the city street whispered in a cool breeze. Cars drove by. The sky, up above the tall brick buildings, was blue.

* * * * *

“I think I need to take a break from writing at my blog,” I had told Maile just the night before. With the projects I’m working on for other people, and with trying to finish up this novel by winter time, I just don’t know if I have time to write blog posts.”

It’s this sense of being stretched, and as time passes and the stretching continues, fabrics begin to tear in places. My ability to be a good father unravels a little. My ability to be a good husband frays a bit around the edges.

* * * * *

“Excuse me, are you Shawn Smucker?”

A young woman stopped beside the table where Maile and I were eating. She had two children with her. I recognized her face but couldn’t place her.

“Yes,” I said. “And you look very familiar.”

“You probably don’t know me,” she said. “But I read your blog.”

She smiled and told me her name. We had gone to the same college, and she was two years older than me. She asked us how we liked life in the city, and we found out that she lived not too far from us. She was very kind.

Then, before she walked away, she said something that had a big affect on me.

“I have to tell you, I find your blog very encouraging. My husband and I are on the edge of making a pretty big decision, and your posts about courage and trust have had a big impact on both of us.”

I was floored. Sometimes it feels like these words are dust thrown into the wind.

* * * * *

“So maybe you shouldn’t stop blogging?” Maile said after the young woman walked away.

* * * * *

I’m telling you this story for a few different reasons.

First of all, being recognized on the street was probably the highlight of my week.

Second, the blogs might flow a little thinner around here in the next month as I try to finish my novel and prepare for the Kickstarter campaign. Before that sidewalk conversation, I had planned on telling you today that you wouldn’t hear from me at all for the next month or two, but I guess her’s was the encouragement I needed to hear. (Also, if you want updates on the novel, you can like my Facebook page or subscribe to my newsletter in the right hand margin of this page.)

Finally, and most important of all, you need to be reminded that what you’re doing is making a difference. The stuff you’re writing, the time you’re spending with young people, the encouragement you give a friend, the evenings with your child, the long days taking care of an aging relative…the ripples are spreading out from the work that you’re doing, and the world (contrary to popular belief) is becoming a better place for it.

Keep doing. Keep being.

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What I Heard My Children Saying (or, What You Can Do With Ten Nails)

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I listened through the open window, and because I stopped and waited and listened I could hear their tiny voices dancing through the summer day, accentuated by the metallic strike of a hammer on a nail, the thunk of hammer on wood (missed!), the raspy sound of the shovel as it shoved into our narrow strip of city yard. They are five and six years old, the two of them, and their voices were serious.

I listened through the open window and they talked about building a tree house out of only a three-foot long board and the ten nails I had given them earlier, five in each dusty palm, five white nails that they held like magic seeds. They raced outside and one began digging and the other began nailing and that’s how it went for an hour or so as they planned and schemed the massive tree house they would build in the tiny tree that lines our city yard. Out of one small board. And ten nails.

This is what it means to be a child: to believe that even a tree house is possible, though you’ve never built one before, though you don’t have the tools or the materials, though you don’t know why or how. To believe it’s possible.

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

* * * * *

I spoke with Kelly Chripczuk the other day and we were talking about trust when she said something that made my ears perk up, something along the lines of,

“Until you lose your identity (as a writer or preacher or student or whatever), there’s so much pressure. Too much pressure. There are people to impress and a reputation to uphold. But once you can let go of that identity, it allows you to play again, like a little child, to create things and not worry about what anyone else will think.”

To play again, I thought to myself. This is what I have to allow myself to do.

* * * * *

I immediately thought of the novel I’m releasing this winter (I’m sorry if I’ve been talking about that too much, but it’s on my mind all the time, and to be honest I’m still terrified of freeing it into the world). But after talking with Kelly, I thought, That’s it! It’s all just play, this creating and conjuring and sharing of stories.

I enjoy writing stories too much to let what other people might think stop me from writing, from creating, from producing and sharing. When it’s me and all these potentially critical readers, I feel myself drawing inward. When it’s me and and the story, just us, and I’m making things up and chuckling to myself and nearly crying, that’s it. That is a life I could live and enjoy and be at peace.

That’s me in the back yard with not enough materials, not nearly the right tools, and ten measly nails. Making plans. Digging in the dirt. Climbing trees.

And believing.

What do you wish you could start believing for again?

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Can You Remember Why You Started?

Start Line from Flickr via Wylio
© 2011 LindsayEnsing, Flickr | CC-BY-SA | via Wylio

If you’ve read my blog at any length since I began sharing here in 2010, you’ve been witness to what feels like an incredible journey, from those early days when I didn’t know where my next project would come from, to our 10,000-mile cross-country trip, to these last two years where I’ve had more work than I ever imagined I would have.

You can learn a lot of lessons in difficult times, but you can also learn a lot during times of abundance, if you keep your eyes open.

This year I’ve had some intriguing projects, some of which I’m in the middle of right now, and the amount of work allowed us to buy a house and move into the city and has just generally made life a little easier. We used to have to check our checking account before filling up the van with gas. We used to line up the bills and have to decide which to pay and which to hang on to.

But this “abundance” has also made life very busy. Very busy. I write all day, six days a week (sometimes 6 ½), and then usually a few hours at night. I’m constantly reviewing and editing and submitting, recording and transcribing and re-writing. Right now I’m at various stages of five different books.

I’m making good money, but a thought dropped into my mind a few months ago, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

“Is this why you wanted to be a full-time writer, so that you could make a lot of money?”

No, was my immediate response. I never became a writer so that I could earn a lot of money. I never became a writer so that I could spend the rest of my life writing other people’s books (though I do enjoy that aspect, and helping someone else share their story seems like a very worthy part of my calling as a writer).

I became a writer because I have stories to tell. Some are true stories, things that actually happened to me and other people. Some are True stories, tales that, while fiction, feel like some sort of very personal history. And in my busy-ness and occasional fear of running out of work, I lost the ability to ask people to wait.

What if I tell them I’m not available for six months and they go with someone else?

But if I’ve learned anything over the last five years, it’s the importance of living life from a place of trust and not from a place of fear. So I’ve decided to start trusting again.

Part of that active trust means not taking on any new projects until early next year. I need to finish the ones I have, and finish them really well.

Just as important, I have a book that I promised my kids I would finish before the end of the year, the first novel I’m releasing out into the world, so I want to spend some quality time revising and editing that story. (I’ll probably release that through Kickstarter, so if you’re interested in hearing about that when it happens, stay tuned here at the blog or sign up for my email newsletter over in the right-hand column of this page.)

Which leads me to this:

Why did you start doing what you’re doing?

For the authors out there…why did you start writing? Was it so that you could build a platform and create an audience and market and beg people to read your book? Or was it something else, something inside you that simply had to tell a story?

Why did you first take the job you have now? Why did you become a painter? Why did you become a pastor or a teacher or a business person? Why did you start that charity?

We are all in tiny vessels lost at sea, and even though we’re fortunate enough to find true North for brief moments of time, we will always drift from that heading. Living a good life means constantly evaluating where we have drifted, and doing what must be done to get back in the direction we are meant to travel.

So, can you remember why you started? (Seriously. That’s a real question. I’d love to hear your answer in the comments.)

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What If, For One More Day, You Didn’t Give Up?

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Stop me if I already told you this story.

I didn’t have any writing work when Maile, our kids, and I returned from our 10,000-mile, cross-country trip in 2012 (You’ll remember that trip in all its glittering detail if you’ve read How to Use a Runaway Truck Ramp). Two or three projects that had been lining up fell apart at the last minute, and what we had hoped would be a quick one-month transition in my parents’ basement turned into an unexpected eight-month stay. (You’ll remember that basement; it’s the same one I wrote about in Building a Life Out of Words.)

(No more book plugs, I promise.)

So there we were with no idea when my next writing project might come in. Trying to figure out which credit card to put that week’s groceries on. Deciding which bills to pay and which to pass to the next month.

That was one of those times when all those little voices start up, voices of doubt and cynicism, the Voice of Responsibility and the Voice of Practicality and the Voice of Look At What All Of Your Friends Have. I started to feel just a teensy bit like a big fat loser of a husband who couldn’t even make enough money to take his wife out to eat every once in a while. (In the mean time, look at Facebook! Look at Twitter! Look at Pinterest! Everyone is so happy and everyone is rich and everyone is eating out!)

I caved under the pressure. I called some friends who called some friends and eventually a friend sent me an email about a warehouse job. It wasn’t much but it was something. Maile and I ran the numbers and realized that if I worked 45 – 50 hours a week (plus spent five hours on the road each week to and from work), and if I paid for health insurance for the family through the company’s plan, and after I paid for gas just to get to work, I’d make a whopping $1500 / month.

But I didn’t think I should take the job. Not just because of the money, either. I knew that if I took that job, I would be walking away from something very important to me, something I’d already sacrificed three years to attain: writing for a living. And once I had that job eating up all my time, I wouldn’t be able to take on writing projects even if they did come up. I knew how hard it had been to walk away from regular income before, and I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to do it again.

But it was real money, not play money in some far-off pretend future fantasy. $1500. I didn’t know what to do.

* * * * *

I’ve been getting these emails a lot lately. They go something like this:

Shawn, I was just like you. Trying every product
under the sun for the last THREE years..

I failed and failed…

Then, I found this: Amazing video revealed

Within first 3 days, I had profited OVER $8,600.

Here’s proof:
Click here to see proof

Because that’s pretty much what all of us kind of want, right? Click here and make money. Click here for the secret. Click here and all your problems will be gone.

But it never works out that way. There’s no job that does it. There’s no relationship that does it. There’s no book deal or signing-with-an-agent or college degree that does it. We spend so much time looking for the things that matter, but the only place we ever look is where we think the money is hidden.

You know where it’s all hidden? All of it? Behind perseverance and trust and the willingness to wait just one more day. And then one more day. And then one more day.

* * * * *

After much prayer and deliberation and counsel, Maile and I decided I should pass up on the job that would make me $1500 per month. We both believed that something would come up. That was a Sunday afternoon, when we made that decision.

On Monday we received two checks. One, from a relative, for $500. Another, a cashier’s check in the mail from an anonymous donor, for $1,000. We unexpectedly made, in one day, what I would have made working for a month at the warehouse.

* * * * *

I actually have no idea what the point is to this story, because I also know plenty of people who made the leap into self-employment or living out their dream and had to crawl humbly back when their plans didn’t pan out. Unlike the network marketing salesmen, I can’t promise you a certain level of income after a certain number of months or years. I don’t know why I’m so fortunate. But I do know one thing.

I went six months after that decision without making any real money, and I didn’t once regret my choice not to take that job. Because I knew I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Writing my blog. Working on my own projects. Trusting. And in the midst of all that, my friend Matthew Paul Turner invited me to go to Sri Lanka as a World Vision blogger. I never would have been able to do that if I had just taken that warehouse position. And then in December I finally landed my next project, a dream job in which I got to travel to Istanbul and write the powerful story of an amazing man.

So maybe that’s the only real point to this story.

Don’t give up. Stick it out one more day.

Stay sober for 24 more hours.

Keep working on that novel. One more chapter.

Don’t close your business yet. One more day.

One more day.

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A Question of Timing #OvercomeRejection

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My friend Andi and her husband.

 

“Andi, this just doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t have any depth.  It’s boring.”

I think that’s what she said, the editor who had accepted my query about an article on international adoption, when she flat-out rejected a piece I had put months of my life into.

Months.

Her rejection of my words, my work, me. . . yep, there it was, she was rejecting me.  And her rejection – justified, reasonable, true because the piece really was vapid – was just a tiny ripple that came before the big one.

My husband and I had been married for almost 3 years, and I was ready. Ready for that baby, that bundle of Guatemalan joy – the son we would name Diego.

We talked, we found an agency, we chose our country, we chose a name.

I even bought the hardware for a crib set that my father would build. Mom and I picked out fabric for the layette she’d make for his room.

Then, my husband left.

I wish I had been able to see in my own desperate article the way I was bracing against what I must have known – somewhere – was coming. But I didn’t see it . . . in the article or in my marriage.

And when rejection came – a ripple and then a tidal wave – my feet were washed out from under me, and I lay crying in a puddle on the floor.

***

5 years later, I am in Breckenridge, Colorado with one of my dearest friends.  My mother has died a few months earlier, and my friend has invited me to take some respite with them for a while.

We are walking to an outlet mall, and she asks how I am after the divorce.  I tell her that I’m finally beginning to feel like myself.  She says – with her years of work as a counselor tied tight to her heart – “5 years. It takes most people 5 years to get over a loss like you experienced.”

Later that weekend, I sit in a lovely restaurant in that gorgeous resort town and cry over the fact that I may never have children.

***

2014.  I am in a farmhouse with a cuddly dog asleep on the sofa and three cats snuggled against the hot water heater.  Outside, two puppies, four goat kids, two kittens, 14 chickens, and two guineas are roaming this place of my dreams – the one my first husband did not take very seriously – in the dream or me.

My husband now – a dream himself – is on his way to work 50 miles away, a commute he takes on without complaint because it builds the life we share in this place completely.

We do not have children . . . not yet, but we both want them. Deeply.  And they will come, we pray, when the time is right.

Because that is the story of rejection. It is often a story of timing, and of accepting the “not yet” even when it comes with the tidal-wave force, even when it leaves us puddled on the ground.

I know – now, 9 years later – that the “YES” of now can pick me up and carry me on with promise and more life than I ever imagined when Mom and I picked out that nursery fabric.  Then, it felt forced, pushed, like that adoption article.

Now, the journey feels steady, unresisted, because now – with this man, the love of my life – is the time.

And Dad still has that crib hardware.

Andi is hosting a Writers’ Retreat at her farm in southern Virginia from July 18-20. If you love to write, you should consider attending. I will also be doing a reading there on July 19th, the Saturday night of the retreat, so if you can’t make it for the entire weekend but would like to come to the reading I believe that is also a possibility.

For more information on the retreat or the reading, click HERE. For Andi’s blog, click HERE.

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This is How I Deal With Rejection

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Today’s #OvercomeRejection post is brought to you by Kelly Chripczuk, blogger over at “A Field of Wild Flowers,” one of the most beautifully written blogs your bound to stumble upon here on these old interwebs. So follow the link at the end of the post and check out some of her other words. In the mean time, here is her post on overcoming rejection (and please feel free to submit your story of overcoming rejection to shawnsmucker@yahoo.com):

It took me over a week to think of a single concrete experience of writing related rejection.

Repress much?  Maybe.

Or maybe I simply haven’t risked enough.  You have to play your cards to win.  You have to play your cards to lose.

Driving in the car the other day, though, it came to me, the memory of a very concrete experience.

About six months into blogging I met with a friend, the editor of a regional parenting magazine.  She wanted to know whether I would be interested in writing a monthly print column, something about parenting and faith.

“What angle are you looking for?” I asked.

“It’s up to you,” she replied, “I see this as an opportunity for you to build a name, a platform, you can do whatever you like.”

Gulp.

So I started, I played my cards and led with what I thought was a pretty impressive hand.  I kept to my word limit and tried to tell spacious stories that invited the reader in.

Three months in I got an email, they were going to go “in another direction,” the column was canceled.

Game over.  Just like that.

I will say that I wept.

It was something, you know, and when you’re a full-time homemaker and mother to four, having a paying gig in the real world, well, it helps you feel like a real person might someday emerge when the years of diapers and laundry pass (they do pass, right?!).

Rejection, like praise, comes with its own set of temptations.

I knew I had written well.  I knew it had simply been a poor fit and there hadn’t been enough time and feedback to find a voice that worked for that publication.

I knew all of that.

But I was tempted, sorely, to let that rejection say something more about my writing and, more importantly, about me.  Desperate (at times) for affirmation and (ultimately) for identity that transcends my circumstances, I face (still) the temptation to let that experience sink all the way down to the heart of me; to let it become an answer to that ever present question, “Am I good enough?”

It’s the same thing I want to do with praise, the same process, only it feels a whole lot worse to begin with.

And there you have it, the heart of the problem, I’m not going to be free to take risks if every failure, every success is allowed to imprint itself with permanence upon the heart of me.

Risk (read: writing) involves vulnerability, a willingness to walk into the arena of life as Brene Brown puts it.  It’s a glorious, muddy, terrifying place, this arena – parenting, writing, I face failure and success every day.  I play good hands and terribly poor ones.

I celebrate the wins and mourn the losses but I don’t live there.  Not any more.  I won’t let what happens in the ring label the heart of me or answer that ancient question.

At the end of the day, at the end of all of my successes and failures, I return home.

I return to love that is unconditional, love that reshuffles the deck and deals out a new hand – new every morning.  I return to the One who changes the question, changes the answers and offers a simple affirmation, “You are loved.”

From that place of truth I step out again, renewed and cautiously hopeful.

This is how I deal with rejection.

Oh, and repression helps too.

Previous installments of #OvercomeRejection:

It Wasn’t My Writing Being Rejected – It Was Me
Permission To Try Again
Don’t Feed the Bear

And don’t forget to go visit Kelly at A Field of Wild Flowers.