Tom's Blog
What I Have Learned
posted 10/11/11
It’s hard to believe, but after all this time, the book is done. What I have sometimes called “the term paper that never ends” has finally ended, and it’s time for my inaugural blog.
The question I find myself pondering as the book-writing process closes is—what did I learn from all this? After all the late nights and the early mornings and the occasional writer’s block and the more than occasional wringing of hands—what did I learn? Certainly I am not the same person who started this project nearly three years ago.
There were glorious times when everything flowed, but those are easy. It’s the other times you learn the most from. When life is not so easy. Looking back, there are two things I could have done differently that would have made my path lighter, both related to each other.
Trust is the first one. Trusting the process would have made everything a lot easier. Trusting that if I’m stuck now, I won’t always be stuck would have made the stuckness a lot easier to deal with. Trusting that if this was really the divine task I thought it was, I wouldn’t be left dangling forever in the sink hole of writer’s block would have made the dry times seem like less of a struggle. How easy it would have been when nothing came to me to just go do something else and come back to the writing later. I never was left dangling. I only had to visit the sink hole occasionally.
The second way I made things unnecessarily difficult was not understanding that there is a proper time for everything. “To everything there is a season,” Solomon said. “A time for every purpose under Heaven.” Which includes writing, apparently. Some call it “God’s timing,” some call it “the flow.” But whatever you call it, there is an unmistakable rhythm to life. Sometimes it calls you to forge ahead. Sometimes it asks you to wait. Either way, one thing is certain: when you cooperate with the rhythm, life is easy; when you don’t, it’s a struggle. Forging ahead when forging ahead isn’t called for makes the forging very uncomfortable.
At times it felt like this project drove me crazy. But does a book really have the power to do that? Of course not. I drove myself crazy. I just used the book as an excuse to do it. Not trusting the process and not cooperating with the rhythm of it caused a lot of angst, but it was all self-inflicted. The times of “I’ll never be done with this,” which led to despair, and the times of “I’ll be done by next week,” which always gave way to disappointment, were never helpful, and in retrospect, never true.
Sometimes my lack of understanding was laughable. When I started this process, I was hoping to be done by October 2009. In reality, I had to push to be done by October 2011! I’m convinced the laughter is healthy, though. It never pays to take yourself too seriously. What’s my crime, after all—being human? If not trusting, wanting to be in control, and being in a hurry warranted jail time, there wouldn’t be many people walking around on the streets. Besides, the discomfort that these cause is punishment enough.
Yes, so many of our difficulties are self-inflicted. Completely unnecessary from a larger, more expansive point of view. If I had it to do over again, I’d trust more, go with the flow more, and enjoy it more—which makes writing a book a lot like life, I suppose.
Interestingly, as I look at the finished project, there’s no sign of a struggle. It seems to be what I considered it all along—divinely inspired. The blood, the sweat, and the tears don’t seem to show up on the pages.
So what about the struggle, then? Where did it come from if it had nothing to do with the book? The struggle is and always was in me, of course. It just took three years of writing to bring it to my attention. Anything you put your heart and soul into will do the same—bring impurities to the surface.
They’re not comfortable to look at. I’ve always said the good news about writing a book is that you learn a lot about yourself, and the bad news is, you learn a lot about yourself. But when you can finally look at the impurities—and smile—then you have done your work. Because then you can do what you have needed to all along—let them go.
Yes, it seems that the book has done its work in me. Which perhaps is the only way I can know that it’s now ready for others.
