circle . . . slide . . . circle

Once upon a time I received a beautiful leather-bound journal as a birthday gift, and I remember spending the next couple of months trying to decide what to write in it. I have been a writer/journaler for the past several years, but for some reason, I just couldn't take the first step and start writing in this thing. It was too nice. I didn't want to smudge the pages. I didn't want to write something "almost workable" down, when what I really wanted was the finished product. I told my dad about it and said, "I would write poetry in here if i knew it was going to be good." To that he replied, "It will never be good if you don't write it somewhere."

And I say all that to illuminate a certain reticence I feel in trying to explain the unexplainable whirlwind of emotion and activity I've found myself in through the past weeks. I want to write it, I want to get it all out in front of me. But I'm scared it won't look like it needs to be, like it really was. I'm afraid to sit down and write for an hour and still not be at the place where I can say, "Yes, I have it. It's all right here. I understand it and I see how it fits in the big picture of God's design." In fact, I think such a proposition is just plain silly, and it's asking too much from my mind and fingers in the short breath since everything ended. In my mind, it hasn't ended at all. It's still going, and will continue to go indefinitely. I don't know where it's headed or what I will be when it finally arrives.

But I need to write. I need to form words and expressions. I need to open the trunk and hang the clothes out in the summer sun so they can one day be wearable. I know it will look like madness at times, and there might even be a smudge or two, but how can we see the beautiful if we're always looking for the ugly? Why bother fall in love with the rose if we're afraid of the thorn? My dad was right: it will never be good if it isn' at least something.

Mind swimming in circles tonight. A little slide to the left or right, then another circle. Maybe tomorrow I'll have something new to say. Hmmmm . . . . . where did I put that journal anyway?