So, I can’t decide if I’m anti-award and will just write fluff today and the rest of the week or just be my normal thought-provoking self (hehe)? I have no hope of winning, so I guess it really doesn’t matter.
I think it’s the height of irony that I should be nominated in this category when just recently I realized that I don’t have anything of value to contribute, that I’ve lost my ability to think, let alone write. For the last eleven years I have been writing Bibles studies and have had women tell me that they have learned a lot and that they still take out my written material and look at them years later. But I haven’t been producing anything of value lately. Nothing that helps, nothing that I can write from the wonderful experiences that I’m having through my study of the word of God. Usually when I write studies, I live what I write but not this time. I feel like I don’t know anything about God’s word. I tried to write something two weeks ago for the Blogging Chicks Carnival and couldn’t think of a thing to write about and when I finally started writing something, I decided, why bother? And then deleted it. I couldn’t relate enough to the material to write about it.
Even though I’m writing a Revelation Bible study and have learned a lot from it, I feel disconnected from the material, it hasn’t touched my life the way that God’s word normally does. I fear it’s becoming an academic exercise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not distant from God, I still experience His love and care and my prayer life is not bad but I’ve lost something that I had and I want it back.
One of the problems I know that I’m having with writing for this blog is that I’m afraid of the permanence, it has had a debilitating effect on me. If I write something, it’s here for all the world to see (well, in potentiality anyway, at least through Google), so I better get it right. I know that since I want to publish, I’m going to have to get over this fear 🙂 but I haven’t been able to push past it enough to just write. It’s easier to just write fluff. And it doesn’t help to know that half the traffic for this blog is for my Samson study. I get a number of hits a day on it (I also get a hit a day on steel-cut oats, go figure). I started writing that study in April and I’ve been getting daily hits ever since. It kind of freaks me out.
Seminary hasn’t been as helpful as I thought it would. It’s made me even more hesitant to write because my confidence has been shaken. I realize I don’t know anything about the Bible and that I have a lot to learn. That’s not a good place for someone who is suppose to be teaching the Bible to be. Seminary has taught me to look at the Bible in a number of different ways that I find overwhelming to communicate to others. I want to bring out the depth of the passage I’m writing about, bringing in the knowledge that I’ve gained from seminary but it’s hard. I feel I’m inadequate to the task.
I understand that God equips those He calls to serve Him, believe me I know from experience. Every Friday morning I go to church not knowing what I’m going to say and then all of a sudden I do. I don’t plan it, it just happens (though, I do research the passage before I teach it but sometimes I have no idea how it all fits together, what is the point of the passage). But it’s different lately on this blog. I can’t seem to get deeper than the surface.
So, after years and years of not being able to turn off my thoughts (especially when I’m turning to go to sleep), they seem to have stopped all on their own. How do I jump start them again? I guess I’ll have to think of a way 🙂
Psalm 143:5-8 I remember the days of old; I meditate on all that you have done; I ponder the work of your hands. I stretch out my hands to you; my soul thirsts for you like a parched land. Selah Answer me quickly, O LORD! My spirit fails! Hide not your face from me, lest I be like those who go down to the pit. Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love, for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.
Tags:
Read Previous Post