As Barbara Walters Once Asked…

You know, I have no idea for certain what kind of tree I would be, but after this winter I’m fairly certain that we’ve narrowed it down to “deciduous”.

All last spring and summer I was a fountain of writing goodness.  If not here on the blog, at least in the pages of MSWord.   I could sew words together fastly and furiously and make something happen.   Then something strange sort of broke inside me around the end of September.

Actually, it was the 18th of September which was both Yom Kippur and the wedding of an old friend.   Several things happened all at once that left me exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually.  Then I spent the next three months rolling in a sort of emotional gravel.    I say none of this to complain, only to realise now that my Weeping Willow is budding and spring seems to be taking at least a valiant first try that I’ve been very much at sixes and sevens for the last season.

I don’t think I’d call it “depressed” because thanks to those drug commercials I now think of depression as a sort of thing where you sit about frowning all the time and crying constantly.  I’ve been depressed before and I know the gut-ache of it.  This wasn’t that; it was more of a sort of feeling like I simply couldn’t try.  Not that there was no bother to trying.  To me that’s the difference between existential illness and actual depression.  A fine line, but one that I think exists for the purposes of defining whether or not modern drugs are required.

Please forgive me.  I know that I have a no-delete policy for this blog, but honestly that last paragraph had to go.  It was just too goppy and not at all sensical.   Where I mean to be going with all of this is that I’ve noticed for the last week or so that I can slowly, haltingly, begin to write again.  I can sit down in front of the computer and have the words I type make a sort of emotional sense that was lacking through this last gray season.    I suppose that this might be where a blogger should say something along the lines of “…and so I’m recommitting to this blogging thing! Sorry I was gone so long!”   But I’m not going to do that because a) I’m not sorry I was gone because I spared all of you a lot of dull drivel and b) I’m no more or less committed to having a blog than I ever was.

I’ve never thought of my blog as a Business or a Brand or an Opportunity.  I’ve only ever thought of it as a huge blessing.  A chance that life has given me for me to use my gift to glorify God in some small way.  For I’ve come more and more to believe that God is glorified by any action that we do WELL.  In the way that a parent is proud when their child sings any song or draws any picture, so I think God is proud if we write well or draw well or build a building well.  The writing doesn’t have to be Christian, the picture doesn’t have to be of Christ or Mary and the building doesn’t have to be a church.

And so every time I sit down and use brain and keys to express a thought or feeling I have that in some small way connects to someone else I think I’ve done a good turn by whatever gifts I’ve been given.  I have to keep telling myself this in light of the fact that I so often don’t feel that I’m living up to whatever potential I’ve had in this lifetime.  I think that’s common for everyone, especially in this society.   Or perhaps not.  Either way it’s a feeling I do have.

I think I better conclude this now, since we’re  a good 200 words over my mental limit and I’m now just rambling idiotically.   But as to the original question I more and more think the answer should probably be Weeping Willow.  It’s both graceful and ungainly, large and messy but when you look at it from a distance it’s very pretty and there are many comfortable places to hide.  I hope to be like that.  Large, messy, beautiful, comfortable.   And budding.