Big Shoes to Fill

Some of you know that I'm working on a book called Big Shoes to Fill. What you perhaps didn't know is that I had stopped writing for a long time. (By "long time" I mean a few months, huge by my standards, someone who can't not write. I finished the first draft in October and even through that, I had felt a certain need to shrink away from it.) Why I had stopped was not really clear to me. Part of it, of course, was just the time necessary between the first and second draft. Most writers will create the first draft in a rush, as ideas come, not stopping even to check spelling, then leave it "to simmer" so to speak. They will come back to it refreshed a few months later. And sure, some of my reticence to continue working on my book could be traced to the fact that I needed some distance from it to write a new draft and develop it further. But that was not the entire story.

Part of the real reason was the immensity of the task. As a work of Christian non-fiction, not only do I have to be true to my own reality of how I have grown as a result of being a wife and raising my two babies, but also to the fact that none of this is my own doing. God is the one at work and I can only perceive Him in my limited way. Sometimes I clearly see His hand at work, sometimes I have no clue. Sometimes I call to Him for help and I feel completely abandoned, some days seem tailor-made for me. What am I to make of this? How do I fit this into a book? And what if I'm wrong? What if, in a year or two, I realize God had thought of something completely different and, in my inability to understand, I had written something else? Books can't be erased like so many pencil markings; they have a life of their own. Although stamped with a date, they can be timeless. Was I comfortable with the idea of possibly misrepresenting what God was doing in my life? More importantly, could I live with it?

If how to write about such a big subject was my first concern, my second concern was even more metaphysical. Should I write? Everyone has an opinion. Every person on earth has a book inside him, if he just sat down and wrote it. Do I really need to add to the babble? And more importantly, had God indeed called me to write, as I had begun to believe? Was I even meant to write? Wasn't I clearly called to be a mother? To teach my children, to watch and pray? Wasn't that enough? Theologically speaking, what was I here for? To raise my children, right? Was it necessary then to stick my neck out about my beliefs? Because, of course, I could be wrong.

The fear of being wrong can be incredibly debilitating. And if, like me, you have mistakes in your past, regrets you wish you could erase right off, the fear or being wrong can be downright paralyzing. I was paralyzed. Each time I thought about the book, I banished the thought. I moved the first draft document off the desktop and hid it. I prayed about it, handing it to God forever. I convinced myself I didn't know enough theology, I didn't have enough time, (what mother has time to write for goodness' sakes?) enough information, enough piety, enough prayer. I wasn't enough. And I told myself I wasn't going to write until I was enough.

Well, you can guess what happened, can't you? There paraded in front me instance after instance of people who didn't know theology, didn't have information, didn't have time, didn't hold day-long prayer meetings, people who were never, ever "enough" in any sense of the word but were enough for what God had chosen for them. I know I sound incredibly flippant here, but I'm not saying anything Scripture doesn't hasn't already said. Just read 1 Corinthians 1:27: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

As regards theology, as soon as I delved into that study, the very first thing the Bible impressed upon me (there's lots, lots more - more than I will ever know!) was man's utter and complete depravity followed closely by man being made in the image of God. Yikes. Talk about a sorry, sad state of affairs! On the one hand, we are made with creativity, with the desire and divine command to rule, to make, to subdue the earth and all that is in it and, on the other, nothing, but nothing we do has ever any hope of being pure or untainted by sin. Wow. Is it any wonder that I stopped writing? Is it any wonder that I simply must write?

I will probably be wrong. A few years down the road, I will probably look at my work and cringe because God's footsteps will be so apparent to me later, so obvious I will slap myself and shake my head that I didn't see them. I will be appalled at how little I knew, how rudimentary my faith seemed. I will, very possibly, make huge leaps in theology that will embarrass me in the future. I will want to blot out entire pages in my book. I will appear naive, stupid, even sometimes a little loony. I will seem overly pious, stupidly moralistic, self-consciously holy, annoying, paradoxical and nothing if not a tad hypocritical. But that is what I must do. It has taken me a while to understand that the desire to write, to create beautiful things, to sing, to run, to take joy in God's blessings and shape and build and create and mold is part of being made in His image. To be overly pious, to sit and pray for hours on end, to refuse to enjoy God's gifts is not. And yet, even as I write this, I worry that I may be wrong. I may well be.

I suppose I really do have big shoes to fill. My feet will always be two sizes too small, the shoes always two sizes too big. They will always bite. And yet, fill them I must.