Wednesday Festival: What To Do When You Can't Sleep at Night

Today we share a blog post from Diana at DRGT/Just Wondering, and since all bloggers write, it feels universal. (Click through to see photographs she included!) 

What To Do When You Can't Sleep...

It's very late in California and I can't sleep.  This doesn't happen to me very often, and usually I stay in bed, toss and turn, count, pray, sigh...and wait.  But tonight, I'm truly restless.  Most likely the immediate cause of this bout is a handful of dates and nuts I gobbled too late - about 9:30.  They're still sort of sittin' there, reminding me that I really cannot eat much at all after about 7:00 p.m. 

But I think there's more going on here somehow. 

This week, I've been resisting this writing, this writing I try to do here at this place.  Wondering why in heck I'm doing it at all, whether it's worth the time, the angst, the crazy-making, semi-obsessive thinking/reading/planning/wondering.  

I think I have this 'call,' you see.  This belly-deep urge to write it all out.  To do what writers do - which is to tell the big story by telling small ones, to lay out the details of one off-the-beaten-path life in hopes that my singular story might connect somehow, somewhere with the broader swath of human existence. All of it offered up as frail, delicate gift - a gift of encouragement or hope or even rueful recognition.

I sat by the ocean for a while today, sorting through a pile of papers I've been collecting.  Printed copies of various blogsite's suggestions for 'building my platform,' or 'marketing ebooks,' or the latest take on those 3-simple-steps-to-stardom.

And as I sifted and sorted, it hit me - hard - that I've gotten more than a little bit lost of late. Platform?? What do I care about a platform? Stardom?? I don't think so. In fact, I don't even hope so.

If the call is to write it all down, then that's what I must do. I must write what I see, what I feel, what I've lived, what I'm living. I need to wonder out loud, to find my own voice and then have the courage to speak it. 

Because when the call first came it sounded like this: "Write for your granddaughter, Diana."  No platform. No ebook. No stardom. Very simple, really. Write for that precious girl. And now we have two precious girls.

That was a little over five years ago.  I was still working, my older daughter's husband was slowly dying, my middle daughter's youngest had just come out of the NICU, my husband was recovering from prostate cancer, my mother was lost in grief over the death of my dad, my job was good, but demanding in ways I never fully understood until I quit doing it.

And there was no space. There was no time. There was no extra energy. Now, I have all three. (Well...maybe 2 out of 3!) 

So. Gracie. Lilly. Whatever comes out of these fingertips - it's for you. It's coming out of my aging brain and my tired heart and it's coming because I believe God is nudging me, pushing me, calling me to it. And it's coming because I love you more than life. 

I hope there is something in these meanderings that will help each of you to learn to listen to your own hearts, to discern the call of a good God in your lives. I promise to keep praying for you (and all your older guy cousins). I'll be praying that as you grow into bigger girls, and then into strong women, that you will know how deeply you are loved - by your parents, by your crazy extended family, and by the God of the universe who has uniquely crafted each of you and who calls you 'daughter,' and 'friend.' 

And now, I really must go to bed!