Serendipity

The drizzle of rain outside my window sparks memories in my ears.  I started a writing project back in December that got temporarily sidetracked by a furry adoption and subsequent training and readjusting. It would be dishonest if I didn't admit that opening the box of my past (literally a box of my old journals) didn't give me a reason to stop and digest.  I'm back in the game, however, and reveling in what I can only attribute to the God who loves me.

My pastor just gave a sermon on how "everything happens for a reason," is one of those stupid things that well meaning people believe. I heard his case, and I totally get it, but on a day like today I still believe it.    I'm really talking about all of the little particles of  life that that appear around me and start to form a picture.  I see a pattern and a purpose in choices that seemed random at the time.

 I decided to bring my writing project along with me on vacation, since I would be spending time alone with my husband and alone with myself for the first time in years.  I figured I would at least have time to get the juices flowing.  I also wanted to throw a book on my Kindle for my reading pleasure, so I downloaded A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by my favorite best guy friend I've never met, but who makes me belly laugh whenever I read his work. When we got on the plane to Seattle, Mel announces that we're going to try and visit a friend of his before we drive over to Canada. Totally last minute, but I would expect nothing else from my husband.  I decide to go with it, see it as a divine appointment.

Serendipity occurs when within the first 5 minutes at this friend's house, I learn from his wife that she's a self-employed editor, sort of an idea coach. She has a great book about memoir writing that she recommends, and she generally encourages me to continue with my project.  I tell Mel on our long drive to Canada, that if I ever finish this book, I'm totally hiring her to help me shape it.

Double Serendipity for me when I'm lounging at the pool yesterday, and Donald Miller is talking to me about Story in the book I randomly chose for my trip. In A Million Miles he's telling the story of helping write the screenplay adaptation for his book, Blue Like Jazz. It's like the conversation I had with Encouraging Editor is continuing in the book by Miller, like we were all there at the dinner table together and he's just building on what we touched on earlier. 

So to all of you skeptics who say you don't understand what I'm talking about when I say "God is talking", this is how I hear his voice:  through people, smells, words, pictures. I hear him encouraging me to continue the project, and hear him explaining the Story we're all living. 

"Glory to God in the highest, for all these events led me to you. Your gentle hands protected me as I wandered in the woods.  I snagged my clothes on thorns, but no wild beast devoured me."

The Notebook

Some people save pictures in scrapbooks, ribbons and trophies, figurine collectibles.  I save everything I've ever written, from the moment I started writing things down.  I asked My husband to retrieve "my box" with all of the older stuff in it so I could fill in some memory holes for my foreign exchange book.  It took all of Christmas vacation, but it finally appeared, and right on top was a school notebook from 1984.  I'd etched the Van Halen logo in several places and written other random things on the front.  As I started reading the stuff on the inside I had to put it down and walk away.  I left it for another week, and then one of my girls read a page---"AAACK don't read that, you must never read any of that."  So I'd just given her the greatest temptation ever.
 I took the book back in my hand and read through again, feeling nauseous, feeling very sad.  In French I told my husband what I'd written about, stuff he knows, some he doesn't.
"Girls, I want you to know that the reason I don't want you to ever read that is because it's not your mom.  That isn't me.  It's who I was before I knew Christ."
The notebook is now strategically hidden.  I've made a plan to make one more pass through it and then throw it away.  Burn it.  It was my lonliest most tragic summer, filled with things I'm forever scarred by, things I truly regret. I'm not ashamed for my daughters to know what happened, but I want to tell them with my true voice, not have them hear it from the very confused girl, who wrote about herself in the third person half the time.
There is one piece that I will keep, an ode to an Autumn leaf, that I wrote on stationary and tucked neatly in the notebook.  I'll keep this thing because it is truly beautifully written and it celebrates beauty and being alive. The rest will burn.