Who Needs Deadlines?

I do.

Though apparently I cannot make them when I do set them.

Public service announcement: I am still alive.

I didn't fall off of a cliff. I didn't travel to a remote island without an internet connection. My laptop didn't break or drown in a deluge of water.

No, I simply didn't have time to do everything I wanted to for the past two weeks, and unfortunately my blog was first to suffer for it.

Good news: I went to an amazing conference over the past week. I met wonderful, godly people who built me up and encouraged me in my walk with the Lord.
I was cut to the heart by the teaching and preaching I received.
I was stuffed with the Word of God for five days straight.
I reconnected with dear, sweet friends I had not seen for quite some time.
I met a lot of new people (by the last day I was overwhelmed with just how many people I could meet).

It was beautiful, it was encouraging, and now it is over.

Now I am back home, where the dishes still need to be done, my job is waiting, and I have ten million things I want to and need to do over this next week. Reality has hit me hard.

I know the adrenalin from this past week will wear off, probably by tomorrow morning. I know that going to one conference does not eradicate all of the sin and time-management issues I struggled with before the conference.

Photo Credit: Evelyn Reynolds
(because I am terrible at remembering
to take pictures)

But that conference made it glaringly obvious to me that, regardless of how crazy or out of control my life may seem, Christ still reigns. He uses the crazy, the overwhelmed, the weak, the broken, the little to accomplish His will. And I felt all of those things as I worshiped with 1800 Christians this past week. You cannot stand in an auditorium filled with people and not feel small. You cannot listen to great men preach God's Word and not feel overwhelmed, weak, and broken. And you cannot repeat your many goals and commitments to all of those curious friends you haven't seen in four years without feeling like you might be a little bit crazy.
But those friends reminded me that Christ is still victorious in my life. Those great men drew my eyes back to Christ through their preaching. And I mingled my voice with those 1800 Christians in praise to this same Christ.

And so my prayer is that, as I slide back into my overcommitted, crazy, deadline-filled life, Christ will be there, that His victorious reign in my life will remain at the forefront of my thoughts. That He would be the meditation, the delight, and the motivation of my life, even in the midst of the crazy, the broken, the weak, the overwhelmed, the little.

To Him be all glory.

I Love My Writing, I Hate My Writing

In my vast experience writing (note: sarcasm), I have found that, with each sentence I write, I have two opposite emotions at war inside of me. They have thrown up the barricades and settled in for a long, bloody war. At the end of each writing endeavor, I find that neither have gained much ground, though sometimes one may gain slight advantage over the other.

I have a love/hate relationship with my writing. On the one hand I obsessively work on whatever project is in front of me at a given time. I sit and ponder the words in my mind, mulling them over until I have discovered the "perfect" sentence structure and descriptions to use. I become unreasonably happy over the resolution of even the tiniest plot-points, and I am giddy when I nail a thesis statement. I love my work.

And then the battle lines form as Hate rears its cynical head and decimates all that I have slaved over for hours.
 I finish writing the paper or story or blogpost, and I sit back and read through it.

And I hate it.

I do not hate it because the topic is useless, or the argument is faulty, or the storyline is cliche (though sometimes that does happen). I hate it because I know I can make it better.

My hatred for my writing comes not from the content itself, but from what I see lacking in the content. I read the clumsily-constructed sentences and I grimace, because I know that I can do better, that I am able to do better.

And that I failed.

My hatred stems from the deep-rooted fear of failure, and when I read through my writing I see that failure in stark, Times New Roman font.

"And so it begins."

I hate my writing, but I cannot stop writing. Because I love my writing. Even as I think it is pathetic, weak, and inadequate, still I refuse to give up. I will read, reread, tweak, ask others to read, my work. Because I love words too much to give up on them. Somewhere, deep down inside of me, the optimist drags herself out of the mud, stands up, and tries one more time.

One more time. 

Even as the pessimist inside of me shoves her face back into the mud again.

I will never be satisfied with my work, because somewhere deep inside of me there will always be that voice that hates my writing, telling me I can do better and that I have failed once again.
But I will never give up on my work, because there will always be that voice that loves my writing, telling me to try one more time, to work on it, to read through it again, because I can fix it. 

This is the struggle of the writer and the perfectionist in me, striving to do better even in the face of my failures and mistakes.

Note: I read through this post and nearly deleted it three times. It is a wonder I didn't leave it a draft!