"Shitty First Drafts"

My first reading for my class "Writing Fiction" is titled "Shitty First Drafts". This threatens to be my most beloved and hated course. Beloved - probably I don't need to explain why...hated because I don't generally write creatively for a deadline. I write for the love of the freedom of letting the experience reign, letting my heart soar through my fingers when the inspiration strikes. But thanks to some of you here, an ex teacher and other friends I have been considering trying to get published in some form if oh so small. Hopefully this class will help me navigate the dark unknown waters of editing a short story/book.

Shitty first drafts...it explains my spiritual life as of late. How about over the whole summer. Why shitty first drafts? Because I am still in the first draft of this new experience of not "trying and working" but just being a friend of God. Shitty...for the week of great inspiration there is a month of distraction and wandering. I am finding that as soon as some great spiritual awaking happens...a new discovery, a break through for some reason I spiral feeling like a plane without wings.

Remember the great struggle not knowing if I would be in school this year? As soon as I found out it was ok I seemed to lose my drive, my connection to my source of energy and strength.

Today I read My Utmost for His Highest Aug 21 - "The Ministry of the Unnoticed" There I underlined this... "The preaching of today is apt to emphasize strength of will, beauty of character-the things that are easily noticed. The phrase we hear so often, Decide for Christ, is an emphasis on something our Lord never trusted. He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to Him."

That is the first thing and the only thing I lose in my spiral. The simple rest of yielding to Him then becomes the happy dance, of adding requirements and "good things" I can do to make it even BETTER, that is the death of relationship.

It feels so good at first. I have control, I can do it..I, I, I..I shift the power just ever so slightly from Him to me. Then the happy dance turns into a frenzied, angry, driven dance to keep ahead of the criticism that I have allowed to rule. It drives those around me into the same dance because I expect of them the same level of "goodness" I have set for myself.

By the time a month has passed I am tattered, looking for rest. That's when I look around expecting to find the criticism coming from Him and find His arms enfolding me craziness and all, His love and a chance to stop the crazy dance. To rest in His arms, to silence the criticism. Today I choose to rest, the first day in several months...