I just finished the rough draft of I Will Dance, a historical fiction novella for Peculiar People’s Heirloom Chronicles book, I Will be Found. This is story I’ve had in my head since I was a teenager, and we’ve been theoretically working on this book for several years, but somehow I’d never been able to get it out on paper. I finally did it!
Not only did I finish that long-awaited project, but this is the longest solo writing project I’ve actually finished. I’ve always been a little ADD with my writing, and never managed to get much done on a novel before loosing interest and moving on to something else. Each new story idea that pops into my head is "shinier" and more exciting than whatever I'm working on at the moment. I’ve also pretty much only done creative writing when I felt like it. When I was in the creative mood.
This month I made myself write almost every day even if I didn’t feel like it (unless I was really sick—which is fairly often). Some days it was only a couple of paragraphs, and other days it was several pages. And I found that when it’s not flowing all easy and pretty, then writing can actually be work. But sometimes making myself do it will cause the creative flow to come back again.
I know the rough draft will need a lot of work to smooth it out, but I praise God that I finally finished! Do a happy dance with me!
This novella was 13,000 words. In November I’m going to do NaNoWriMo and try to write 50,000 words in thirty days. When I struggled this much to get 13k done, why do I think I can get 50k done? Especially when added to my normal writer struggles with writing block or the “blahs” is a fight with a chronic illness that can leave me nearly non-functional some days. Seems rather silly and impossible, doesn’t it? Well, for one thing, it’s okay if I don’t get the full amount done. It’ll still be more than I would have written otherwise. And for another thing, I happen to have a God who loves silly and impossible conundrums.
It’s true. Look at history. Think of the fortressed city of Jericho that had a huge impassible rock wall around it. What did God ask His people to do? March around it fourteen times. Silly actions to attempt the impossible. But that wall fell down.
Think of a young man with only a sling shot and three stones going against a huge giant in full body armor. Silly and impossible. But Goliath died.
My own life is full of these stories, as well. Think of a young lady with vision-brain connection problems that mean she can’t remember what she’s seen or tell apart things that look similar. God asks her to become fluent in a visual signed language. Silly and impossible? But I am fluent.
Think of a lady entering a interpreting training program that is so difficult and intense that there is about a 20% graduation rate. That lady develops a debilitating chronic illness in the middle of the program. Her even thinking of continuing seems silly and impossible, doesn’t it? And yet, here I am, graduated.
Yes, my God is a God of the silly and impossible. He often requires very hard work and determination on our part, but then He steps in and does a miracle. I believe He gave me the talent and desire to write. Part of my being a good steward of those gifts is for me to…well, to write!
So here I am, once again feeling God pressing me toward the silly, impossible task of writing 50,000 words in the month of November. And I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see how He does it.
The best part about these silly, impossible tasks is that when the silly becomes amazing and the impossible becomes accomplished there is no doubt about Who did it. God gets all the glory.
Showing posts with label trusting God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trusting God. Show all posts
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
When I grow up, I want to be...
This year God has been teaching me two things: complete dependence on Him, and, in that dependence, how to find true joy. He’s been showing me that we were created to be happy, because in Him is fullness of joy. Here on this earth that joy will never be pure and complete, and we will face many trials and times of suffering, but even in the midst of those times, He will provide joy, if we wait on Him.
This is a bit of the story of my journey. I know it’s long, so if you don’t have time to read it all, please at least read the last part.
I started grieving in the summer of 2007. The loss had come a long time before that, but I’d never fully accepted it.
The life I was grieving was my own.
Each time I waited for test results, waited for a doctor appointment… each time I writhed in pain or was too tired to hardly hold up my own head, I wondered what it would be like to get the news that I was dying. I thought about what it would be like to know I had only a few months to live, or a few years. I hoped it would be long enough to finish a few books, to leave a legacy behind. I planned what I would say to my friends, how I would tell them. I even planned what to write on my blog.
Even more, I thought about how it would be to get the other answer--the one that told me what was wrong and how it would be fixed. I didn’t have to think much about what I would do when I got that answer, because I knew. I’d been planning my life since I was little, dreaming about what I would be when I grew up, just like all kids.
But the thing I didn’t think about was what I would do if neither of those happened. I didn’t think about what would happen if the answer wasn’t death, or really even life, but something in between. How do you plan for something that isn’t a “yes” or a “no”…something that’s not even really a “wait,” but is just, well… an “is.”
And yet, it’s something we should all be planning for, something we all should know will happen. Because the day will come for all of us when God says, “You don’t get to live according to your plans. You get to live My plans.”
This is a bit of the story of my journey. I know it’s long, so if you don’t have time to read it all, please at least read the last part.
I started grieving in the summer of 2007. The loss had come a long time before that, but I’d never fully accepted it.
The life I was grieving was my own.
Each time I waited for test results, waited for a doctor appointment… each time I writhed in pain or was too tired to hardly hold up my own head, I wondered what it would be like to get the news that I was dying. I thought about what it would be like to know I had only a few months to live, or a few years. I hoped it would be long enough to finish a few books, to leave a legacy behind. I planned what I would say to my friends, how I would tell them. I even planned what to write on my blog.
Even more, I thought about how it would be to get the other answer--the one that told me what was wrong and how it would be fixed. I didn’t have to think much about what I would do when I got that answer, because I knew. I’d been planning my life since I was little, dreaming about what I would be when I grew up, just like all kids.
But the thing I didn’t think about was what I would do if neither of those happened. I didn’t think about what would happen if the answer wasn’t death, or really even life, but something in between. How do you plan for something that isn’t a “yes” or a “no”…something that’s not even really a “wait,” but is just, well… an “is.”
And yet, it’s something we should all be planning for, something we all should know will happen. Because the day will come for all of us when God says, “You don’t get to live according to your plans. You get to live My plans.”
****************************************
Once I grew past the stage of wanting to be a pink and purple kitty cat, my childhood dreams for my future never changed a lot. All through my school years I had the same answer to that perpetual question of what I wanted to be when I grew up: A stay-at-home homeschool mom and a missionary, preferably to Mexico. The number of kids I wanted did change, rather drastically. As I matured, I realized my childhood visions of a dozen kids might be just a tad lofty. I adjusted it to the more reasonable number of six, and later even less, saying, “I’d be happy with at least four.”
I’ve always loved kids, and kids have always loved me. My mom calls me “the kid magnet.” Seriously, I can spend a total of 60 seconds with a youngster and the next time he spots me he’ll start screaming, “Amy!!” and jumping up and down excitedly. I pictured myself as the ultimate involved, imaginative Mom, with enough discipline to keep everyone happy, but with lots of adventures and fun. I figured I’d be married in my early twenties, start our family a year or two later, and after everything was settled down several years after that, perhaps be called to the foreign mission field.
You may wonder why writing didn’t play a role in what I wanted to be, and that’s because being a writer has never been something I want to attain someday. It something I am. I’ve always been a writer and I always will be one. A novelist, however, now that’s something I attain to be!
So I went happily through my young life, picturing my adult self as a wife, mom, writer, and missionary. In my senior year of high school, my hopes shifted slightly to accommodate a new love of figure skating, and a growing love of American Sign Language. My next-oldest sister and I began taking ice skating lessons. Though we were comparatively old to be learning that skill, and we both were beginning to struggle with our health, we threw ourselves completely into it and joined the group of “rink rats.” We were on the ice at least four days a week, practicing and soon entering competitions and working as assistant skating teachers. We even got to do some informal mentoring of the younger skaters in our social group.
Now my goals included becoming a figure skating coach, preferably with a lot of Deaf clients. Despite growing pain and fatigue levels, I made it farther than any of the coaches and parents expected. After four years of skating, I was able to do one of the lowest sit spins at the rink (though my camel spin, on the other hand, looked horrid! lol), could land all my single jumps, and was working on my axel and double sal cow jumps. Then, slowly, skating got too expensive and time consuming, and too painful.
Besides, God was drawing me toward another focus. Two summers in a row I attended ASL camp in Tennessee at the Bill Rice Ranch, a Christian Deaf ministry. It was there God began letting me know He had plans for me as a sign language interpreter.
Though I’d been playing around with sign language since elementary school, and more recently pursuing it more strongly, the thought of being an interpreter when I grew up had never crossed my mind. And yet, it fit so perfectly. I love languages, cultures, and people. I have a deep empathy with others, am not shy, and experience little to no stage fright. Perhaps the Deaf and interpreting community was to be my mission field. And though no husband was in sight yet, interpreting was something that could easily be adapted to being a stay at home mom. I could work one or two nights a week while my husband was home with the kids, or I could just accept special assignments like weekend Homeschooling workshops.
Still, if I had not known so clearly that this was the path God wanted for me, I would have given up so many times. The two year interpreter training program is stretching into four years, as I’ve been faced with learning disabilities and visual struggles, and one health problem after another. But there was always the bright future ahead. A future after the training program, when I would finally have a basic set of skills to build on, and I could go conquer the world. Perhaps I would meet the right guy shortly after I was done with school, and I could work as an interpreter for a bit before turning my focus to a family. I would be happy and healthy and my own energetic, happy-go-lucky self as an interpreter, wife, and mom. I could be a missionary here at home, or go work with foreign Deaf missions. And in between all that, I could write all those novels building up in my head.
And then…
Then came that answer, the diagnoses after all the tests and all the doctors. Fibromyalgia. It was a long word, and one I understood too well, since my oldest sister lived it every day. It was the answer that wasn’t a yes and wasn’t a no. It wasn’t death and heaven, and it wasn’t health. Instead, it meant a life of constant pain and fatigue, a life of sudden boughts of cognitive dysfunction, IBS, and innumerable other symptoms. A life with an illness that doesn’t kill you, but yet doesn’t get better or go away.
It meant a life that didn’t match my life. Suddenly my brain doesn’t always work well enough to understand English clearly, much less translate it into a whole second language system. Suddenly I’m so fatigued I can hardly think of any words, much less write amazing fiction stories. My pain levels teeter so high I can hardly load the dishwasher, sign for more than a few minutes, or hold a pen long enough to write a thank you note.
The thought of working full time and then returning home to an evening of housework and socializing suddenly is impossible. Thinking of caring full time for children is overwhelming. Life becomes defined by four letters: PACE. Pacing is the single most important thing to managing my symptoms enough that I can live…at least a little. I must work a little, and rest a lot. Before I do anything, I must think how it will affect me, and if it’s worth it…which is certainly challenged by the fact that how it affects me changes daily or even hourly.
“Why?” I cry out to God. “Why do you give me all these talents, skills, and dreams in one hand, and then fill the other hand with…this? How can I grow up to be the successful person You want me to be, if I’m to be sick, forever?”
Slowly, as I learn to accept my disability and learn how to live life as fully as I can with my limitations, I begin to see. Still, only as in a mirror dimly, but I see in my reflection how God uses my life--not the one I dreamed of, but the one I have--to bring Him glory, to reach people that other life would never have touched, and to trust Him and depend on Him completely.
As I do that, I see bits of those talents He’s given me can still be accessed. I grasp a little energy to write with, and times of less pain to interpret a while. As I learn to pace, those times grow. Perhaps someday I’ll even gain the strength to care for a family. I don’t know what the future holds. But I do know one thing.
God is enough. In Him is fulfillment, and in Him is fullness of joy. Despite this earth, with its emotional and physical pain, we were created to have joy. Though it won’t come completely until we reach heaven, for now it is enough.
Today, on my twenty-seventh birthday, when my life is so different from how I dreamed it, I know what I’m going to be.
When I grow up, I’m going to be happy.
I’ve always loved kids, and kids have always loved me. My mom calls me “the kid magnet.” Seriously, I can spend a total of 60 seconds with a youngster and the next time he spots me he’ll start screaming, “Amy!!” and jumping up and down excitedly. I pictured myself as the ultimate involved, imaginative Mom, with enough discipline to keep everyone happy, but with lots of adventures and fun. I figured I’d be married in my early twenties, start our family a year or two later, and after everything was settled down several years after that, perhaps be called to the foreign mission field.
You may wonder why writing didn’t play a role in what I wanted to be, and that’s because being a writer has never been something I want to attain someday. It something I am. I’ve always been a writer and I always will be one. A novelist, however, now that’s something I attain to be!
So I went happily through my young life, picturing my adult self as a wife, mom, writer, and missionary. In my senior year of high school, my hopes shifted slightly to accommodate a new love of figure skating, and a growing love of American Sign Language. My next-oldest sister and I began taking ice skating lessons. Though we were comparatively old to be learning that skill, and we both were beginning to struggle with our health, we threw ourselves completely into it and joined the group of “rink rats.” We were on the ice at least four days a week, practicing and soon entering competitions and working as assistant skating teachers. We even got to do some informal mentoring of the younger skaters in our social group.
Now my goals included becoming a figure skating coach, preferably with a lot of Deaf clients. Despite growing pain and fatigue levels, I made it farther than any of the coaches and parents expected. After four years of skating, I was able to do one of the lowest sit spins at the rink (though my camel spin, on the other hand, looked horrid! lol), could land all my single jumps, and was working on my axel and double sal cow jumps. Then, slowly, skating got too expensive and time consuming, and too painful.
Besides, God was drawing me toward another focus. Two summers in a row I attended ASL camp in Tennessee at the Bill Rice Ranch, a Christian Deaf ministry. It was there God began letting me know He had plans for me as a sign language interpreter.
Though I’d been playing around with sign language since elementary school, and more recently pursuing it more strongly, the thought of being an interpreter when I grew up had never crossed my mind. And yet, it fit so perfectly. I love languages, cultures, and people. I have a deep empathy with others, am not shy, and experience little to no stage fright. Perhaps the Deaf and interpreting community was to be my mission field. And though no husband was in sight yet, interpreting was something that could easily be adapted to being a stay at home mom. I could work one or two nights a week while my husband was home with the kids, or I could just accept special assignments like weekend Homeschooling workshops.
Still, if I had not known so clearly that this was the path God wanted for me, I would have given up so many times. The two year interpreter training program is stretching into four years, as I’ve been faced with learning disabilities and visual struggles, and one health problem after another. But there was always the bright future ahead. A future after the training program, when I would finally have a basic set of skills to build on, and I could go conquer the world. Perhaps I would meet the right guy shortly after I was done with school, and I could work as an interpreter for a bit before turning my focus to a family. I would be happy and healthy and my own energetic, happy-go-lucky self as an interpreter, wife, and mom. I could be a missionary here at home, or go work with foreign Deaf missions. And in between all that, I could write all those novels building up in my head.
And then…
Then came that answer, the diagnoses after all the tests and all the doctors. Fibromyalgia. It was a long word, and one I understood too well, since my oldest sister lived it every day. It was the answer that wasn’t a yes and wasn’t a no. It wasn’t death and heaven, and it wasn’t health. Instead, it meant a life of constant pain and fatigue, a life of sudden boughts of cognitive dysfunction, IBS, and innumerable other symptoms. A life with an illness that doesn’t kill you, but yet doesn’t get better or go away.
It meant a life that didn’t match my life. Suddenly my brain doesn’t always work well enough to understand English clearly, much less translate it into a whole second language system. Suddenly I’m so fatigued I can hardly think of any words, much less write amazing fiction stories. My pain levels teeter so high I can hardly load the dishwasher, sign for more than a few minutes, or hold a pen long enough to write a thank you note.
The thought of working full time and then returning home to an evening of housework and socializing suddenly is impossible. Thinking of caring full time for children is overwhelming. Life becomes defined by four letters: PACE. Pacing is the single most important thing to managing my symptoms enough that I can live…at least a little. I must work a little, and rest a lot. Before I do anything, I must think how it will affect me, and if it’s worth it…which is certainly challenged by the fact that how it affects me changes daily or even hourly.
“Why?” I cry out to God. “Why do you give me all these talents, skills, and dreams in one hand, and then fill the other hand with…this? How can I grow up to be the successful person You want me to be, if I’m to be sick, forever?”
Slowly, as I learn to accept my disability and learn how to live life as fully as I can with my limitations, I begin to see. Still, only as in a mirror dimly, but I see in my reflection how God uses my life--not the one I dreamed of, but the one I have--to bring Him glory, to reach people that other life would never have touched, and to trust Him and depend on Him completely.
As I do that, I see bits of those talents He’s given me can still be accessed. I grasp a little energy to write with, and times of less pain to interpret a while. As I learn to pace, those times grow. Perhaps someday I’ll even gain the strength to care for a family. I don’t know what the future holds. But I do know one thing.
God is enough. In Him is fulfillment, and in Him is fullness of joy. Despite this earth, with its emotional and physical pain, we were created to have joy. Though it won’t come completely until we reach heaven, for now it is enough.
Today, on my twenty-seventh birthday, when my life is so different from how I dreamed it, I know what I’m going to be.
When I grow up, I’m going to be happy.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
With Wings
The time has come. I’ve had four years of hard work, challenging work. There were many times I wondered if I would ever make it this far. Yet, by God’s strength, here I am, facing the Qualifying Exam for my interpreting program. All of the work, sweat, tears, and yes, joy, comes down to twenty minutes. Two ten minute texts for which I must absorb every word, figure out the meaning, translate into another language and culture, and produce smoothly--all while still understanding the next sentence, and the next, never loosing a concept.
If I pass the QE on Monday the 23rd, I’ll be assigned an internship with a few skilled interpreters, and will began working under them as a classroom interpreter. Then I can graduate this spring (though I’ll have to take a few summer general ed. classes to complete my AA degree) and begin working in low-risk settings as an interpreter.
We have four chances to pass the QE. My class took the first one a few months ago. Only one student passed. I almost passed that one and was feeling confident about passing this next one. But God has a way of making sure that every time I start trusting in myself, a reminder comes along that HE is the one my strength comes from--I can’t do it myself. And so it was that I had a bad flare during much of this school term, primarily debilitating fatigue and cognitive problems. I went almost a month with only a few hours of interrupted sleep most nights. I failed a test because my short term memory couldn’t grasp what I was seeing quite long enough to write it down. I was having language production problems, meaning I was walking around saying things like, “Dad, it’s your turn to heat your food up in the dishwasher.” or, “Wheryugn?” And that was just the English chat, my ASL was worse and my interpreting… well, mostly wasn’t.
I’m doing mostly better now, but besides the tests I messed up, I feel like I lost about three weeks of practice time, and maybe even went backwards in skills. So here I am, facing the QE feeling totally unready, but trusting God because He’s already proved that He can do the impossible in my life.
This term hasn’t been all bad, though. In school we are focusing on K-12 classroom interpreting and our last topic in ASL class was interpreting children’s books. We each got to pick a book and then performed the story for our test. I wish all tests could be like that! I love it and had so much fun. I posted a video of it here.
I continue to be encouraged by how God uses my struggles to reach out to others. I was recently interviewed by a researcher from OHSU for a book she’s writing for teens who have Fibromyalgia. Then just last night I was invited to sit on a workshop panel of interpreters with disabilities. The workshop will be this spring and the panel will have a mix of hearing and Deaf interpreters with visible and invisible disabilities. Also this spring, HopeKeeper’s magazine is going to publish an article I wrote shortly after being diagnosed with Fibro.
Oh, I guess I should give an update on my heart, too. I now have a heart monitor, which has proved to be rather noisy and sort of amusing. When I start feeling heart palpitations (which is generally constantly from evening through to the morning, and occasionally all day) I’m supposed to push the button to record my heartbeat. Then the little machine gives off a loud tone with an even louder beep for each beat. Thankfully I can mute it a little by putting a finger over the speaker, but it still distracts my classmates. Then it rings every half an hour until I can get to a phone (can’t use a cell) to transmit the recording. I just lay the receiver of the phone over the monitor and it screams its beep into the phone at four times a faster speed. It often sounds rather like a beeping tea kettle. Somehow I don’t think that’s quite what a heart is supposed to sound like… I see the cardiologist next month. If something is wrong with my heart, I’m sure that’s contributing to my fatigue and sleep problems.
But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint. (Is. 40:31)
If I pass the QE on Monday the 23rd, I’ll be assigned an internship with a few skilled interpreters, and will began working under them as a classroom interpreter. Then I can graduate this spring (though I’ll have to take a few summer general ed. classes to complete my AA degree) and begin working in low-risk settings as an interpreter.
We have four chances to pass the QE. My class took the first one a few months ago. Only one student passed. I almost passed that one and was feeling confident about passing this next one. But God has a way of making sure that every time I start trusting in myself, a reminder comes along that HE is the one my strength comes from--I can’t do it myself. And so it was that I had a bad flare during much of this school term, primarily debilitating fatigue and cognitive problems. I went almost a month with only a few hours of interrupted sleep most nights. I failed a test because my short term memory couldn’t grasp what I was seeing quite long enough to write it down. I was having language production problems, meaning I was walking around saying things like, “Dad, it’s your turn to heat your food up in the dishwasher.” or, “Wheryugn?” And that was just the English chat, my ASL was worse and my interpreting… well, mostly wasn’t.
I’m doing mostly better now, but besides the tests I messed up, I feel like I lost about three weeks of practice time, and maybe even went backwards in skills. So here I am, facing the QE feeling totally unready, but trusting God because He’s already proved that He can do the impossible in my life.
This term hasn’t been all bad, though. In school we are focusing on K-12 classroom interpreting and our last topic in ASL class was interpreting children’s books. We each got to pick a book and then performed the story for our test. I wish all tests could be like that! I love it and had so much fun. I posted a video of it here.
I continue to be encouraged by how God uses my struggles to reach out to others. I was recently interviewed by a researcher from OHSU for a book she’s writing for teens who have Fibromyalgia. Then just last night I was invited to sit on a workshop panel of interpreters with disabilities. The workshop will be this spring and the panel will have a mix of hearing and Deaf interpreters with visible and invisible disabilities. Also this spring, HopeKeeper’s magazine is going to publish an article I wrote shortly after being diagnosed with Fibro.
Oh, I guess I should give an update on my heart, too. I now have a heart monitor, which has proved to be rather noisy and sort of amusing. When I start feeling heart palpitations (which is generally constantly from evening through to the morning, and occasionally all day) I’m supposed to push the button to record my heartbeat. Then the little machine gives off a loud tone with an even louder beep for each beat. Thankfully I can mute it a little by putting a finger over the speaker, but it still distracts my classmates. Then it rings every half an hour until I can get to a phone (can’t use a cell) to transmit the recording. I just lay the receiver of the phone over the monitor and it screams its beep into the phone at four times a faster speed. It often sounds rather like a beeping tea kettle. Somehow I don’t think that’s quite what a heart is supposed to sound like… I see the cardiologist next month. If something is wrong with my heart, I’m sure that’s contributing to my fatigue and sleep problems.
But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint. (Is. 40:31)
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