SCRAPS.

As a general rule, I do not sew.  To me, sewing is frustrating, difficult, time consuming and, contrary to what a lot of people believe, expensive.  Plus, when you are all done with whatever you are making, there is always a pile of awkwardly shaped scraps left and it's hard to know what do with them.  Will I use them again?  Should I throw them away? Should I store them in the garage for 5-10 years  so I can use them when I do another sewing project?
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One of my friends often reminds me that God doesn't waste any experience in our lives: our joys, our trials, our boredom, our sin.  He uses everything we go through in life for his purposes.  To be honest, though this is true, it doesn't always FEEL true.  So often, when I spend an entire day or week sick on the couch, I feel like one of those little scraps...like a leftover piece cut from something that was once useful or meaningful.  However, this week, this idea of God not wasting anything in my life has started to make a little more sense to me.

As I have mentioned many times before, I love to write.  It is truly a passion of mine.  However, sometimes, I can sit down for hours and come out with something that I hope nobody ever reads. These past couple weeks, I have been thinking about some old stories that I wrote, but never finished.  I remember almost throwing them away, because I thought they were so terribly written.  But now that a little time has passed, I can see both their flaws and their merit.  It is making me want to turn those scraps of writing into something new, something useful.  If my health holds up enough, I think I will give it a try.  If they are not turning out, I might just tuck them away for another day... Either way, I am learning to appreciate the jagged and unfinished things in my life as projects to be used in the future-even if it takes 5 or 10 years to finish.

FOGGY.

For my 3-5 readers out there, I would like to apologize for not writing more last month.  As I mentioned in my last blog, I love to write and when I don't I feel like my thoughts are trapped. However, with the exception of this past week, I have what Lyme doctors call "brain fog."  Brain fog is pretty much what it sounds like: fuzziness in your brain.  It's difficult to focus, difficult to process and difficult to make quick decisions (which is why I rarely drive).  I have DEFINITELY had incredible progress in this area of my sickness over the past 3 months, which makes a world of difference in my day-to day life.  However, I still struggle some days with reading and always have a hard time driving.  Luckily, writing seems to be the easiest mental activity with brain fog, which is pretty much amazing!

This past week I have had the clearest mind I have had for months, which means I have been working as much as possible on my children's writing, which I absolutely love.  However, I have not been able to get to my blog too much.  For this, I apologize.  My brain fog is not something I foresee going away anytime soon, so my blog will probably be off-and-on.  However, please don't stop checking periodically for new entries.  Also, I really love feedback, thoughts, quotes, etc.  They encourage me to keep processing and writing all the things that God is teaching me and challenging me with in a difficult space in my life.    

ISOLATE.

(Photo by: N. Johnson)

Both sickness and writing create the same problem in my life: Isolation.  For a poor extrovert like myself,  this is a mild form of torture.  (Okay, perhaps I'm being a bit dramatic, but it has been a very long day and I am utterly exhausted.)


The problem is that I don't have a choice whether to be sick, so I can't really change that.  On my worst days of sickness, I honestly don't even like to talk very much.  (For those of you who know me- you know this is very strange indeed).  But writing is definitely my choice.  I mostly write children's stories, but also like to write poems and hope to write a novel someday. 

I recently went through all my old stuff in in my closet and found a ridiculous amount of journals- about 4 per year since I was in Junior High until now.  I can't help but let my thoughts out on paper.  I think my head would have exploded if I had all those thoughts inside of me from Junior High until now.


It is so strange to me that I often feel like writing as soon as I start feeling better.  You would think that an extrovert like myself would just want to get out and see people and talk (and believe me, on my good days, I do).  However, there is a part of my that is shut down or cut off when I am sick.  It is that part of me that cannot sleep until I write down my thoughts.  It is that part of me that like to analyze and make something new that has never been made before.  It is like my Lyme Disease traps that inside of me and it is just dying to get a breath of air.


Breathe.  Just breathe.