I Respond

Photo courtesy of the Brilliant One - my husband Pete

“I am very close to perfect.
Jesus is perfect, and I am very close to Him.”

“Your silence cuts to the quick and hurts more than anything you could say.”

“I didn’t like it all! At first it was tantalizing, fascinating, mesmerizing, curious – but then I saw it for what it was: disgusting. And it no longer holds any kind of draw for me, but more of a repulsion.”

“I keep deleting you – you keep coming back. Why do you continually use that key to open the door – interest, kindness, compassion? And yet it is no different than any other door. I’m just one of many doors in your room.”

“My soul hums in response to His Spirit – His song is what I yearn to hear; the quality of His Voice, the timbre, the resonance. I would fall in love.”

“Kicking a pebble in the street – childlike – carefree… at my age!”

“Isn’t it funny how we look forward to the accolades written on our papers by our teachers? How our hearts soar! But how they dive when we see that our neighbor’s papers received more.”

What is my Response? The answer to that question is what inspires me to write.

The quotes at the beginning of this blog are a few of my responses to situations in my life, to books I have read, and to people I have met.

We are involved in the Great Conversation, are we not?

Mortimer Adler said, “What binds the authors together in an intellectual community is the great conversation in which they are engaged. In the works that come later in the sequence of years, we find authors listening to what their predecessors have had to say about this idea or that, this topic or that. They not only hearken to the thought of their predecessors, they also respond to it by commenting on it in a variety of ways.” (Mortimer Adler: “The Great Conversation Revisited,” in The Great Conversation: A Reader’s Guide to Great Books of the Western World, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1990, p. 28.)

To me, the Great Conversation is all inclusive: you write something, say something, or do something, and I respond.  I can respond in my head, in my heart, in my actions, with my words, or with my writing. I may respond in a variety of ways.

I am currently reading the Gulag Archipelago by Alexsandr I. Solzhenitsyn. The following sentence sparked a response:

“A person convinced that he possessed spiritual truth was required to conceal it from his own children!”

Here is how my response evolved. My first thought was, “What!! How can that be?!? The Russians were imprisoned because they taught their very own children what they believed to be a spiritual truth?”

Then I started thinking about some of the events in the news lately and how our government officials are becoming deaf to the voice of the people and I thought, “I can see that. I can see it even possibly happening here in our country.

“Hmm… that would make a great story. Imagine our country getting to a point where we are ordered to conceal the truth about God from our own children or we would be imprisoned for 10 years or more. How could we get the Truth out? What ways would we think up to tell them about the Truth? And how could this injustice be corrected?”

Without going into a long story about the particulars, just last night I was asked by my daughter’s father to not answer any questions she may have about Christianity. His request made Solzhenitsyn’s statement hit home even more emphatically.

But I don’t write fiction at the moment… So what is my inspiration for the non-fiction I am writing? It is my God-directed response to situations in our lives. It is the fire that He places in my heart that can only be put out by writing about it.

I had a little friend of my daughter’s come over to our house last week dressed very inappropriately for her age. Add to that the fact that she is boy crazy and this young believer has a dangerous situation in the making. Then my 20 year old son came home from a trip to the amusement park and made a comment about girls who walk in various states of undress. He explained how difficult it was for him to keep his mind pure when this parade was continually in his line of vision.

My response? The article What am I Wearing?

When I do respond, I ask God for His wisdom first.

James 1:5 (Amplified Bible) If any of you is deficient in wisdom, let him ask of the giving God [Who gives] to everyone liberally and ungrudgingly, without reproaching or faultfinding, and it will be given him.

And this goes for ALL of my responses (well mostly). If I’m praying with someone, I ask. If I need to discuss something, I ask. If I’m going to tell a difficult truth, I ask. And when I ask, I question God for my motives -am I looking at this wrong? Am I incorrect in this situation?

And He so graciously answers every time! He’s especially good at telling me when I’m in the wrong. Sigh… those are the not-so-fun conversations we have.

You may be wondering what my response is to anyone who says that I am not allowed to answer my daughter’s questions. Let me share it with you:

“I understand how difficult this is for you, but the answer to your request is no. You are telling a mother that she cannot answer her daughter’s question – a right that I inherently have because I am her mother. You are requesting that I ignore what the Founding Fathers of this country worked, fought and died for: freedom of religion. I am being told that my freedom of speech means nothing. And she is being told that she can ask 7+ billion other people  to answer a question that her own mother is not permitted to answer. I cannot agree to this petition of yours. I also understand that there may be repercussions following this answer. But we are prepared to meet those with God’s help. May God bless you with wisdom and understanding in all of this.”

Thomas A. Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

My husband says, “Authors are ninety-nine percent inspiration, and one percent grammar.”

Next up in our Blog Chain is Chris Solaas at Creative Adventuring. Look for his inspiration on the 12th! For more blogs in the Blog Chain, please see the links to the right. Blessings!