So, I’ve been “absent” from the Blogosphere for a few weeks…

With cause, perhaps. Without cause, mainly, except in that I have been overwhelmed with work assignments as well as other tirelessly monotonous “to-do”s and a sheer lack of drive and willpower. It pains me to say that, yes, pain – physical, agonizing pain – has also played a huge part. It’s as if the breaking of my heart has found some way to manifest itself into the needling anguish of arthritis and tendonitis, coupled with MS and fibromyalgia, crippling my hands with searing discomfort and affliction. My mind, twisted and tormented by sprouts of new ideas bursting through a barren wasteland of decades-old non-composition, enduring the pulverizing wallop of giant new characters scrambling around, seeking to mingle and cavort with the edges of reality, and gasping for air, avoiding the sinking, drowning sensation within, yearning to stay connected to eyes, ears – a whole consciousness – awakened to the ‘New’, hidden in plain sight, by virtue of new, broadening perspectives.

For anyone who has known me longer than a week, my fierce desire to be a writer is more than evident – even in the performance of my rather lifeless “day job”… With the onset of such debilitating pain, I was beginning to feel as if I had been led down a long, winding road that culminated in a wall of thickets and brambles, impassable without seeing my dreams ripped to shreds. Even these few words today are met with bittersweet passion and, well, infuriating pain! (I say “infuriating” because if it weren’t for the pain, I would write and write and write – but even if I were to “power through the pain” as I have in the past, it ends up leaving me truly incapacitated, with barely enough strength to hold a pen, raise a glass to my lips, or pet my fur-babies; therefore, I am truly infuriated by the pain!) However, I felt it necessary to expound on both my recent hiatus as well as something I read this morning that struck my inner soul like a flash of lightning.

My truancy, I believe, I have sufficiently addressed. I now wish to share something with you that I hope touches you in a way that helps elevate you beyond any barriers that stand between you and your dreams:

In the reflection portion of a devotional I received via email this morning, the question was asked: how much energy do you expend crafting words or stories that are here one moment and gone the next? It was followed up with this question: what could you speak or write today that might outlast you?

…let that sink in…

Here’s where I was struck by a jolt of electricity: the ending prayer called on a thanksgiving for the deliberate and intricate unfolding of my own life’s story, with its unpredictable plot twists and myriad of interesting and motley characters. It reminded me to grieve the sorrows – “the dark episodes” as it referred to them – and unabashedly name my fears and hopes for the chapters yet to be written.

In that, I was reminded: My. Story. Is. Not. Over. There are still chapters that have yet to be breathed into existence! Who’s to say that my hands will always ache? Who’s to say that my rather lifeless “day job” may not disintegrate into a beautifully fantastical dream job of imagination and writing? What I can say is this: absence truly does make the heart grow fonder! Despite the pain, my heart’s fire is ablaze just in composing this short oration! And with such, it spurs me on to continue!