When a sprout becomes a flower, it probably seems like a vain struggle to the sprout. It must first disrupt all the dross and clutter. It must create its own space, pushing up past the layers of death and stink, only then to heave its way upward with all its might, doggedly searching for the light.
2019: I’m doodling and a mantra overtakes me:
In devotion to transformation
I couldn’t stop writing it. I fill pages and pages with experimental hand-lettering. I didn’t understand at the time, but life unfolding would explain it.
In devotion to transformation
In devotion to transformation
In devotion to transformation
It seems the moment I closed my sketchbook, the lockdowns started. Then I was pregnant and everything was shifting and swirling like sand.
Every evening, June and I spend golden hour on our farm chores. We admire the sunset while we tend to all the animals and the garden. I’m quite tired by the end of this scene, as June is clinging to my hip while I walk and water and heave things.
After chores, June “eats” her dinner and I start cooking ours. I leave it to simmer on the stove while I transport my food-splattered toddler to her bath.
I sit on the bathmat and rest my back while she splashes in the tub. I watch her babble and play before I scrub her down.
Every single evening is the same. I could have never imagined it before.
This work could be a heaven or a hell but my glad heart makes the slog sparkle. I am living my devotion.
One day, I dreamt up something new that I wanted: to build something meaningful, to teach, to learn.
So I started the best way I could figure: I’ll start making content again, see what people want to hear from me.
It’s not working.
I am in the messy middle, throwing spaghetti at the wall.
The growth is in allowing myself to be uncomfortable. To see how hard I can cringe at myself and keep going anyway. To notice the things I tell myself. You are stupid to think this would work. Also, you’ve aged.
I would never talk to my friend that way. If I were talking to my friend, I would say: Hey, you are trying something new, in public. That takes a lot of courage and you’re doing great. Keep going. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You got this.
I push publish. I feel like spaghetti.
This work could be a heaven or a hell but my insecurities make the slog painful. I am living my devotion.
I used to live in the city, and we ate out every other day. I never could have imagined myself cooking every meal at home, with a toddler on my back, a rooster waiting in the shadows to attack my leg, my employment history somewhere on the bottom of the ocean. Yet, I unfurled into this soft form that I didn’t even know I wanted.
Now, I try to build an audience online, where my channels once lay abandoned. I’ve experienced it before, but I can’t yet remember what it will be like for things to click creatively again, to have many people say yes, yes, I get what you’re saying. It feels far away: a soft vision that I don’t even know I want.
God, give me sweetness in this devotion.