I was the shiny new girl. The one who came most anytime of a school year when growing up. Middle, beginnings, or endings, did not matter really. Most every grade was in a different school. I loved it then. I could change. Be a chameleon.
I graduated with strangers, or in the least, casual acquaintances. That was when I first, really ached for community, for a family of friends to celebrate memories I never shared.
I still love moving. It energizes my soul. I’m sure my penchant for it is quite unhealthy. But I’m now married to a man who loves stability over chaos. To him, moving is that chaos.
So we travel from our homebase, a farm in the boonies. As we travel, I see homes with their tidy split rail fences, under towering maple trees, rolling hills beside their white plantation home. I make up stories about the people who live there. I imagine the husband pulling in, thankful every night for the serenity besetting him, the family doing their mundane dinner rituals. Neighbors grow to know each other over years of perseverance. The small, familiar town holding childhood nostalgia. I imagine the Mom at the local grocery, balancing Johnny on her hips to keep his fast feet from making her chase them as they bump into Sally and catch up on each other’s lives.
This is now becoming my life. The one I’ve dreamed for others. It has not been easy. To stay put. Thing is, with moving, you learn to depend on yourself most the time. It’s a nasty habit. One I’ve been trying to break. One that’s broken me many times.
I write. It helps with my stay put-ness out here in the middle of dairy farms and wild Bermuda. Writing is also humbling with a knack for magnifying insecurities I didn’t even know I had. But I still do it. Writing is my recipe. It’s a dash of survival mixed in with a heaping side of, deepest pleasure.
I have admired my cousin, Cindy McCormick Coloma’s skillful fiction. She has been more faithful and long suffering with her writing than I have.
I, myself, was never going to write books. Never. You’d think I would’ve learned about “never.” I once said I’d never move back to Texas. But guess where I live?
Social media is funny, in a weird, awkward and school-yard, kind of way. Most days I can ignore it. Then there are days like today.
Truth is, I’ve been working on a book. One that’s been healing me. One that has rough edges still being smoothed off. One that is hard and scary. Since starting, a floodgate of words have drowned me. I want to be a good steward. But how?
This is where my own strength steps in, to try and control everything. To take charge. I revert back to the person I once was. But I’m at the mercy of needing help.
We aren’t meant to carry our dreams alone. Dreams are meant to be shared.
I wrote an article. For a contest. And it’ll take a team effort for it to go anywhere. Only the top 10 pieces with the highest votes will be selected before a publishing house. And this book inside me, the one which makes me tremble and ache, the one which feels like the little red train that could, has a chance of being seen. I’m the unknown, new kid, among a sea of peers, asking to be picked for the team, afraid of being last.
Needing help shakes my core. But I’m putting on my big girl pants. It’s time to grow up. Would you be pay it forward and be part of this dream and vote?
My piece is here: Dear Weary-Worn Mother (Who’s Given Up)
Much love, courage, & fear.
~~Tammy {Duet 31:6}
What courageous thing is God calling you to do? What insecurities are keeping you from it? In what ways do you need encouragement?
