Journal the Journey

Fifteen minutes of each day seems so insignificant in the grand scheme of life. Yet, a lot of things both great and small happen in fifteen minutes. That’s the amount of time it takes me to get to the gym, church, or work. War can be started, peace can be made, in our lives or across the globe. A marriage ceremony can take place. A child can be born. A life can be lost.

Our entire lives can be broken into fifteen minute intervals; we get 4 sets in an hour and 96 in a day. As I was thinking about the power of fifteen minutes, it occurred to me that a lot can be said in fifteen minutes. This is my goal as I embark on a journey to become a more faithful writer: to set aside fifteen minutes a day to focus on writing something that may be worth the minute it will take someone else to read it. (Keyword: may. No promises, here.) This is an intimidating challenge for me, because my previous attempts of blogging prove I am a lengthy writer. Case in point… here’s a link to a post from one of my old, abandoned blogs: http://desireesurrendered.blogspot.com/2010/07/living-in-awareness-of-death.html. ( ^ There is a link here, but it may look invisible to you…)

In addition to being naturally wordy in my writing, I tend to critique and edit my drafts to death. Because of this, each blog entry up to this point in my life has taken about 3 hours start to finish, some taking longer. Then there’s the castaways. Numerous blog posts I initially worked passionately on lost their luster while tucked away in a dusty hi-tech drafts folder simply because the time it would take to tweak them to my satisfaction was hard to come by.

So this is an exciting and incredibly scary new venture for me. It’s my “no excuses” blog. I am committing to it because I feel strongly that one of my God-given purposes on earth is to write. But I don’t have hours of time to dedicate to it every day, at least not in this stage of my life. I’m a wife, mom to 7 and 17 year old girls, teacher, and friend. I am also dedicated to going to the gym several times a week and involved with small groups through my church. The hours of my day seem to slip through my fingers, leaving me with a residue of tension concerning the things left undone as bedtime draws nearer, one of those things being writing time. As I prayed about this a few weeks back, I heard God speak within: Fifteen minutes. Just dedicate fifteen minutes to it.

This has humbled me as I have thought about it for the past couple weeks since that moment in my car on the way to work. I’ve spent years putting off so many blog posts that I felt urged to write, all because I let anxiety get the best of me. The task seemed so daunting, so laborious. And I struggled with why, why so hard when I enjoy writing so much? I have journal upon journal full of my writings, things on my mind and heart spilled onto paper over the years.

Why was it so hard? Because I’ve demanded too much from myself when it comes to blogging. He’s told me many times in my adult life to write publicly, and I said yes… on the condition I can scrutinize it to pieces before I put it out there for all to see. I’ve demanded more from myself than even my perfect and loving Father has, and this is a big problem. How ironic, that my perfectionist ways were not the perfect God’s will for my writing. God, what other areas of my life have I done this in- where am I striving for perfection and beating myself up for falling short, when you love and accept me just as I am? For when I think I know better than God, I am trusting my own opinions of what is best over His- and His opinions, my friend, are facts.

I feel Him calling me to share with the entire world wide web things that get placed on my heart, and to me it matters not even the slightest if I have just one reader or one million. Despite my enjoyment of writing, I’ve never felt like my writing abilities are anything special or out of the ordinary. I’ve never identified it as a “gift,” but I am trying to because my Creator and the husband He’s given me are telling me it is quite relentlessly. So I understand acceptance of a gift is a far cry from becoming arrogant about it. God knows I never want to be found arrogant about anything in my life. This blog is more of an act of obedience than anything else. And because of this, I am not going to spend hours laboring over it when the direction I have been given is to keep it short and simple. So I will do my best to set my timer at some point every single day for fifteen minutes, even if I am not sure what I want to write about that day. I will write until the time is up. When the time is up, I will stop at that very keystroke, even if it is mid-sentence. Maybe I will pick right back up there the next day, if what I was writing about is still on my mind and heart, or maybe it will stay that way forever. We shall see.

Lastly, I will not edit my writing when the time runs out. How freeing this is going to be, if I don’t lose my mind in surrendering this crucial step of formal publication! So please accept this as my sincere apology in advance, fellow grammar police.

“Based on the gift each one has received, use it to serve others, as good managers of the varied grace of God.” – 1 Peter 4:10

(This introduction obviously was exempt from my fifteen minute rule. I intend to write my first truly fifteen minute post within the next 24 hours, and any posts that will extend beyond that time frame from here on out will be published on my old blogspot mentioned earlier.)