Last night I got an email saying a post I wrote was rejected by a website. Despite the fact that I had hesitated to submit it, because it didn’t feel quite right for their voice, I still felt the sting.
I told Mr. Fantastic that they undoubtedly saw me and my work as trash, looked me up on twitter and discerned great lack in my personal character, and that they probably think I dress funny and slouch too much.
He agreed and passed me the chocolate cake.
See? He has clearly earned the name Fantastic.
I found some space on my bookshelf and bought a new memoir, Sparkly Green Earrings, by Melanie Shankle. She’s deliciously witty and her words of faith and trust go down smoothly, straight to the heart. When she told the story about being locked outside her house when she was nine months pregnant, wearing a too small non-maternity bikini, I realized that she is my new imaginary best friend.
The first few chapters, however, are about miscarriage and I was not emotionally prepared to have a new best friend tell me so much of her business. But I can’t put the book down, because, she is my new best friend after all, and besides, the book is that good.
When I do put it down, I am slammed with a thousand thoughts at once:
My boys miss their best friend in Tennessee, and my daughter has no memories before our current house. We are considering hosting a Chinese woman who is chaperoning orphans here in Texas, and I wonder again why I long to adopt from there when there is no apparent path to do so set before us? There are a dozen people waiting for me to text them or call them or email them, and when did our relationships begin to lack all possibility for slowing down? Summer is almost over and I am not ready for homeschooling, and don’t mention Fall baseball- I’m still recovering from the Spring insanity.
All this yanks at my heart and makes me wonder how God turns all of that into our life?
The melancholy sadness of that question grows up around me, lush and fragrant, like the grass after a heavy rain.
I used to wallow in that sadness, look for people or circumstances to blame, or think of how to fix myself. Now, though, I just keep stepping on. There is too much life to live, and I want all of it, the happy, the sad, the easy, and the difficult.
I want to breathe in God’s grace and follow Him into the world, even if it is emotional, messy, and confusing.
Because right now there are women enslaved in the worst ways, homeless children, corrupt governments, and marriages on the brink of snapping. And there are beautiful sunsets, grey-haired couples holding hands, fathers who live to raise their children above even their own dreams, and women changing the world with the gospel.
All this yanks at my heart and I am in wonder at how God turns all of that into our life.
It’s life that is growing up around us, lush and fragrant, and we all have a part to play in building His Kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven.
Right now we hold life in our hands, it is holy and filled with Him, and sometimes it stings with rejection and questions, but mostly it is more beautiful than we can bear.
So pass the chocolate cake and tell me your story. I want to hear all about it. There is nothing better than a new best friend, imaginary or otherwise.
And there is always room on the shelf for another book.
