over a rainbow

Have you ever had a project that consumes you in the most positive way? It's not too overwhelming but it's not easy. When you think about it at all, it just makes you feel more alive inside? But you don't feel pressure let it consume other parts of your life, it just takes up the time you have for it and nothing more?

This is where I am right now with the book I am writing. I just feel destined to complete this novel; to tell this story. I enjoy thinking about it even when I'm not writing it out, but it isn't all I'm thinking about. I am so excited to watch as the story slowly takes its form. The characters are becoming real people to me. I am forming them out of bits of myself and bits of my perceptions of other people. Sometimes I am exaggerating things, other times I'm really taking an exact experience in my life and expressing its essence. I'm taking moments of my life and the lives that have touched mine and replaying them with only words, reorganizing them in ways that they could have occurred but didn't. Every moment that I write this novel, every moment that I think about writing it, I feel more myself than I have ever felt before...ever.

I think it helps that my life is full of things that I generally love to do. Yes, sometimes I am challenged by being a mother, or learning to speak Danish. I feel like I need Marc's assistance to complete any house project if only because the work can feel lonely. Sometimes I can't figure out how to finish my sewing project or make a website design do what I want. But, I still love what I am doing. I think the love comes out of how much I am always actively learning. My brain is never bored these days.

Writing my book or a blog post that has been brewing in my head, it's exponentially greater than all of those things. I'm learning and loving what I do like everything else, but attached is a higher feeling of purpose. I was made to write words, I was made to inspire other people with those words. I have known for a time that this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but writing the novel has reinforced this within me even more so. Such that, at this point, I am feeling a deeper connection with God every time I am in a writing session. Like the time I send writing words was time that He planned out for me before anything ever existed. I know it sounds so prideful, so full of hubris, but I am honestly more humbled than anything else because I have the privilege of experiencing this feeling.

Sometimes I wrestle with the idea that I won't succeed. Right now I'm telling people that I am writing a book, and then I will say I have written a book, and then I might say I am selling a book. And somehow, eventually, the words I am making; the ones that tell me "writing is my purpose" are going to have to tell other people that as well. I don't want to need approval outside myself or outside my family, but what is the point of writing something if I don't try to share it with strangers. And in this world, sharing means making an exchange. To show people that I value what I'm writing and they should value it too, I have to ask them for something in return. This is tragic to me, really. 

If everyone was able to live how I am living right now... If we valued our time that we are alive as much as we value the numbers on our bank statements, people would know my words were worth something before they read them or exchanged anything for them. Imagine a world where every time a person is doing something, that something is the best and most important use of the time they are using to do it. It doesn't logically work in the world we live in now, unfortunately. In this world you have to spend so much time and energy convincing yourself and others that the things you are doing are important, you end up with less energy and time to spend actually doing those things. But sometimes you get to live in a special, limited-time-offer bubble where the things you are doing are the best things to be spending your moments on. It's truly like traveling somewhere over the rainbow but the worst thing that could happen is you have to click your heels and go back home.