I looked up at our black walnut tree and cringed. This winter we’ve been denuding it of all its green “finger thick” limbs, donating pounds and pounds of them to a good cause—a friend’s alternative cancer therapies. Evidently one of the natural approaches she is trying involves drinking a tea made from young black walnut tree twigs. But in the process, our tree doesn’t have much to go on for next year’s growth cycle.
But that’s not why I cringed. After all, the squirrels take most of our walnuts, and the tree isn’t at all impressive in size or beauty. I cringed because I felt a little bit like that tree. I feel sometimes, as a writer interrupted, that all my creative energies vanish in every direction but writing. To make time to write is to feel guilty for putting something else aside. As a homeschooling mom with an organic chicken and egg business, and many other farm activities to keep up with, I usually end each day with a sigh and a prayer, and most times I feel satisfied about what’s been accomplished. But there is always a regret on those days where the time never came for writing.
God created within me a writer. He also pulled me out of a writer’s frenzy about four years ago and renewed my priorities for this season in my life. We homestead. Children grow up fast. Christ could return any time. I simply don’t have excess time at this point to devote to getting published and keeping up with deadlines. But that doesn’t mean I can’t hone my craft while I wait, snatch an early or late hour here and there to improve my WIP, study the trends and learn from the masters. All the while living the adventures that will add scope to my future WIPs. Another thing I can do, as a homeschooling mom, is train my children to be self-motivated educators, and train each of them in the ways of the household, thus working toward a day when with more of us sharing the load, my poor old tree won’t be creaking away, having given all.
My springtime is in sight! Some of you might be there already, enjoying a full time writing career, or at least the fruit of fewer energies being expended teaching littles to read, write, do their laundry and love Jesus. I’m enjoying the process of seeing my first teenage daughter bloom. She also has a writer within, working its way out of the chrysalis into a bright, sunshiny world. And so, we plug away, every minute full of *good* things.
We must cling to hope, yes? My friend with terminal cancer was sent home to die by traditional medicine’s standards, but after 6 weeks of carefully adhering to a regime of black walnut tea, cactus and several other alternative paths, her brain tumor shrank enough for her to have 99.5% of it surgically removed! Never give up, my friends…keep working toward your goals, and prioritizing the life you live today so that when tomorrow comes, you can embrace it!
Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”
