I have fifty-five unpublished posts that are sitting at various stages of completion on my blog's back pages. I wrote three more last night, and I can't bring myself to publish any of them. They're either too heavy, too depressing, too irrelevant, too whiny, or too private...or all of the above.
At least a couple dozen of these posts are pretty close to being finished, but I just can't pull them together in the end. There are so many thoughts swirling around in my head these days that, for the first time in a long time, I just can't seem to straighten them out to the point where I reach an end-point or conclusion. Writing (whether for my blog or for journaling purposes) is usually a source of solace and/or inspiration for me, and/or a way of working something out in my head. I like to go back and fiddle with the words after I write a post, in an effort to clearly make the point I want to make - such as in my last (silly-ish) post on vengeance. I'm sure I don't always succeed in accomplishing my goal, but these days I can't even get some of these posts finished in draft form because there's just too much in there for me to be able to pull them together.
I can't even always remember these days what I've published and what I haven't - so I worry about repeating myself, or about saying something that comes completely from left field because I haven't provided a context for it through an earlier post. It's a conundrum.
In addition to various day-to-day anecdotes about the kids, I've got other things going on in my head that I hope to put out here in the coming weeks:
* how to raise kids in community in an age of 'silo-ism' - does it really take a village to raise a child and, if so, how do you get a village together?
* what the heck is up with my depression? Life seems to have stabilized after how many years of roller coasterism and now I struggle with being low?? What's up with that?
* what is church? By this I don't mean the building - heaven knows I've been attending church for all but a couple of years of my life. But really, what is church? What does it mean? You'd not think that I'd be asking this question after being a Christian most of my life, but I'm contemplating this question more and more these days.
* our younger children's birth family.
* how do childhood expectations of life shape what happens?
Ruth, I completely understand having posts that are unpublished. I have a few that I have not posted as well for exactly the same reasons. some things just seem too private. In particular I am struggling with the posts regarding our referral, court date and the day we took custody of Addis. If you are never able to publish those posts, I sincerely hope that writing them at least gave you the ability to sort out some thoughts and gain some perspective about the topic at hand. As for your comment about it taking a village to raise a child, I believe, in many ways it does. In my own experience, it took a village to support me through the adoption process. People who raise me up with love and prayer when I didn't feel strong enough on my own. These same people love my son. A village is made up of the people who love and support you. You already have a village. Your family, friends, blogger friends, yahoo group friends, fellow home school moms, etc. Keep your chin up friend.
ReplyDeleteAh, such good questions at the end!
ReplyDeleteAbout church. I do'nt suppose you get 'The Briefing' over there, do you? It's a (really good) Christian magazine (not sure if magazine is the right word, but whatever). This issue (which I just read yesterday) has a fantastic article about the purpose of church. Spoiler-ing it for you - the author concludes that church is the endpoint - church (ie, a gathering of people who worship and serve God) is what everything else is for. So - the purpose of church isn't to do evangelism, rather, the purpose of evangelism is to build the church. (Not necessarily our local churches, but THE church, of which our local churches are a part). I don't think the article is online but it's definitely worth a read - LMK if you want me to scan and send it to you! I'm supposed to be sending you something else, too, right? So this is me re-chasing you for your address!
Oh, and as for the depression... ugh, it makes perfect sense to me. While things are tough externally, it's easy to feel like things would be better WHEN... or things would be better IF... once life is actually externally okay, I found that things collapsed in my head. There was no longer any velocity to give me momentum. Without that when or if I wasn't actually looking forward to anything, I couldn't hope for anything - and without that feeling of moving (even if it was from a bad place) I realised how bad my head had gotten. That might not be how it is for you. But I think that explains one of the reasons why things were so bad for me.
(Although, having just re-read that, I don't mean that things are EASY for you, or for me. Just that there is now only a daily grind of difficulty - no longer any big arc to what is happening).