~ On Being Transferred ~

Whew. What a month. Praise God.
May has been one of the craziest, packed full, insane, spirit filled months of my entire life here on earth. I can't even begin to write about it, and I'll admit it; I have been putting it off. Writing has seemed for the past month like something I don't have enough time to sit down and do. But this morning is so calm. I'm in my own house, in my own room, reading my own Bible, singing my own songs, and writing. Life hasn't felt this good in a very long time. The Lord brought peace again, like He never fails to do.



I would write about what Transfer was like and how all the messages were so great and the worship...maybe another time. But oh, summer brings great things, and I'm sure of it. At this point, staying home from everything is a very, very great thing. Being able to play outside in our backyard is a very great thing. Reading to Ryan, showing him the magic of Narnia and Harry Potter, that is a great thing. Reviewing notes and re-reading passages of scripture, jumping on the trampoline late at night, getting together volleyball and soccer games...that's what's in store for my summer. I don't know where the Lord wants me to be as far as mission trips go, but for now, before everything is worked out, I will make home my mission, along with joining the work-place for the first time. I will try to make pouring into my friends my mission: encouraging them in the gospel.

~ Short, short-story ~

I wrote this the other day, and thought I'd put it on here.

She tried and tried, but her heart just wasn't in it that day. Her sketches were as bland as the words on the page. When she wasn't drawing, she was writing, and when she couldn't write, she drew, and when she couldn't draw, she wrote. Both were particularly unhelpful tonight. Maybe it was the weather: dreary, rainy, depressing, and probably smothering her creative outlook.
"Maybe tracing would be easier," she thought. The lines weren't straight.
"Perhaps writing a song would work." The lines didn't rhyme.
Things just were not going well on that rainy night in the city. All she could hear were the raindrops on the avenues, highways, and back alleys, the knick knacks on her counter rattling with the thunder, and the round lanterns (imported straight from Japan and China) blowing back and forth under her ceiling fan.
"Reading?" she asked herself. "No, still too much to do."
Yet here she sat, blankly staring at a screen that was no more helpful than the rain outside. Papers were scattered around her chair, filled with either the first chapters of a novel (which would have been supremely popular over every other in her time), or the beginnings of a sketch of a girl or a boy, doing something or other depending on their expressions.
"I just need to step back."
The digital-green clock read "1:00AM" but that was the usual for her. The streets were still busy in the city: so was she. Or at least, she was trying to be busy. She was trying very hard to be busy. But, artist's and writer's block had finally forced her outside onto her little apartment's "back porch." The lines of the city were blurred without her glasses, but she wasn't about to put them back on. The rain felt too nice on her discouraged face. She took a deep breath, and the refreshing moment was spoiled by the inhalation of exhaust from the cars, taxis, and trucks below. They looked like little blurs too.
Suddenly, a burst on inspiration hit her. She ran back inside without drying her hair or her face and sat down on the floor. Ravenously, she grabbed a piece of drawn on paper and found a blank space. She sat for at least an hour trying to get it right, occasionally going outside and coming back in, looking out the windows, and taking her glasses on and off.
The result was amazing, with or without glasses! She didn't sleep that night, but she wrote a short paragraph for her sketch, showered, dressed, and drove down to the Agency at "6:00AM," according to the clock.
They loved it, all of it, and the next day it was up on a billboard, sponsoring some perfume they had named after it: "The Raining City."

For us. For all the girls who are doing something or other, hitting blank pages and spacing out. Sometimes we have to blur the lines to see them.