Getting Back on the Horse

A few days ago I started a blog post talking about how I'd been kind of down lately, mostly feeling sorry for myself. The non-writing project I've been preoccupied with is a baby. I'm into the second trimester and, for some reason, the puking has started now. I'm getting over a cold and my husband has been out of town for almost two weeks. It went on to say that when I'm feeling bad and especially when my husband is out of town it's easy for this stay-at-home-mom-ness to feel monotonous and thankless and lonely. It doesn't usually feel that way. Usually, I genuinely enjoy it and I'm thankful that I'm able to stay home.

Then it said: I know that the remedy for this is writing.

I'd planned to say that writing grounds me, always has. When I'm working on a writing project I have direction and focus. I'm a better me when I'm writing. I'd planned to quote Franz Kafka, "A non-writing writer is a monster courting insanity." I'd planned for all of this to kick my butt in gear. Even though it's hard to write when you're throwing up in the kitchen sink. I was going to power through and make it happen.

But then last night I woke up in the middle of the night and instead of talking about writing or writing about writing, I actually wrote something. I'd been thinking of my son's birth and a particular memory made me cry into my pillow. Instead of wallowing in it, I got up and wrote it.

After fourteen hours of labor, including two hours of pushing with nothing to show for it, the doctor said, “This baby is either very large or in a strange position,” and recommended a C-section. Shortly after 1:30am I held my nine pound, two ounce baby boy with a head two inches larger than the average baby. He was chunky and perfect with a full head of dark hair.

The next morning, I sat up in the hospital bed, still exhausted from the night before. My fine, straight hair was already hanging limp and greasy around my face. I was swollen all over. My belly still looked quite pregnant even minus the nine pound baby. I was holding my son when the student nurses and their supervisor asked if they could come in the room. I said sure.

The supervisor put a hand to her chest and said in an awed voice, “Oh, you look so beautiful. You’re just radiant. You are such a beautiful new mother.” I started crying. I knew what I looked like. My sarcasm meter started to go off. It was such an over-the-top, almost ridiculous compliment but when I looked at this woman’s face, all I saw was sincerity and kindness.

I still rate it as one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me. Perhaps this woman, who spent a lot of time with women who’d just given birth, said that to every new mother and maybe the student nurses told every mom that their baby was the cutest one in the nursery. 

I sure hope so.

Even in the middle of the night, writing is never the wrong answer.

Submission (the writing kind)

Yikes! I haven't blogged in forever! I've been working on another project recently. It's been pretty consuming. I haven't been writing much at all.

This year, just like the past two years, my New Year's Resolution is to submit a manuscript to an agent. But this year, I think I'm actually ready. Last year my bubble burst when a kind reader pointed out that the manuscript really wasn't ready. I've gone back and forth on which manuscript I'll be submitting and I've finally decided that I'm submitting the memoir. It's my story to tell but honestly, it's some of my best writing. I was reading over the manuscript and I'd forgotten all about that last round of rewrites. It was so much better than I remembered. There were huge sections that I didn't remember writing or reading before.

My heart sank again [when I heard which church I would be serving]. In a worship class in seminary I joked that, “It’s not church if there’s not an organ.” I had always had high church “smells and bells” tendencies that only grew stronger in seminary attending chapel at Candler. The song my heartstrings are tuned to sounds like “Be Thou My Vision." There’s an organ and sometimes a piano playing along with it. There’s weekly communion and stained glass windows. And liturgy, ancient words. It was fine to wear shorts and flip flops but in the song my heartstrings are tuned the clergy wear vestments.
I already knew that my soul wouldn’t be fed there. There are many ways to worship God. This is just the particular song that my heartstrings are tuned to. I can find God in other songs but this is the song I lean on. This is the song of my childhood, this is the song I grew up with, the one I can sing in my sleep, the one I can sing when there are no other words.

In many ways I'm afraid that a spiritual memoir will be harder to publish than a novel. But a great spiritual memoir is better than a bad novel, right?

As ever, my husband continues to show his support by quietly supplying me with what I need. He bought me the 2015 edition of Writer's Market. Now I have no excuses. I have a book that lists agents and publishers. And a husband who knows way more about religious publishing companies that anyone else I know. 

It's really happening.