If I'm Being Honest. . . Candy Corn is the Root of All Evil

If I'm being honest. . .

I want to write, and I've got nothing. No ideas, no passion, and no fire. At least not when I have a chance to sit down and write. I haven't posted in a month. It's been a pathetic excuse for a writing year. I just don't have it right now.

I want to pray, but it took a lot of energy and willpower just to shut off the TV tonight and go to my computer to type a prayer rather than watch just one more segment of one more show. I don't pray every day. I set a goal at the beginning of the year to sit down and type a prayer 200 times over the course of the year, and I'm not close. There's a week straight missing hear and there in the log. And it's become such a battle to get there.

I want to be in better shape, but I can't seem to just not eat junk. I work out often, knees screaming, just to maintain where I'm at. But that doesn't keep me from one more trip to the candy jar, or one more helping of supper.

I want to sleep but it comes on slowly and leaves me early. I walk around tired and wired from an endless string of cups of Folgers for the entirety of the work day. Exhausted by the end of the day, I repeat the cycle of not doing that which I want to do because I just don't have it in me to act.

I want more from myself. I want more for myself. I want the me I was created to be, the battler, the disciplined hard-worker who names what they will be and then does.

On the other hand. . .

I coached my daughter's soccer team tonight. She was fantastic. She plays with joy, plays hard, and listens when her coach is talking. We spent quality time together and will do so again in two nights.

Today I asked a future teacher who's been observing my classroom as part of his coursework what he's noticed. His response: "You take your job very seriously, and you know how to talk to kids." I'll take it.

I"m preparing this week: to present at the state English teachers conference, to officiate my sister's wedding, and to deliver my first sermon at my church in November. I'm excited about these opportunities.

My wife made tortellini tonight. It was delicious. And just about every other night we sit down as a family to eat, it's delicious. She loves to cook. She loves me. I win.

Tomorrow I will walk into a school where I get paid to talk about books. I will be greeted by friends who will make me laugh. The first cup of coffee will feel like a treat, not a crutch.

Pause. Stop. What have we learned from this post that began with nowhere to go and ended up here?

1. You will hardly ever feel like being the you that you want to be.

2. It is crazy what we allow ourselves to accept from ourselves on our own time as opposed to the time that's committed on our schedule or calendar.

3. Sometimes you just sit down and write and find out what comes out. Like right now.

4. Putting down the bag of candy corn led me to shut off the TV. Shutting off the TV led to prayer. Prayer led to writing. I hope writing leads to satisfactory sleep. Logic says, therefore, that candy corn is of the devil.

When Pigs Fly

While hiking at Lime Creek Nature Center this week, my wife and I took advantage of a situation that has become somewhat rare: the opportunity to talk to our daughters while on a hike. Since they've acquired biking skills, they vastly prefer the exhilaration and freedom of pedaling to our daily destinations. As we were trekking on muddy trails on Sunday, they had no other option but to walk next to us and tell us what's on their mind.

I love what's on Elise's mind.

Elise is our dreamer. She dreams in full-color, with bright, bold, certain strokes. Her mental paintings are never quite finished; there's always something to add to this corner, or a different color to mix here, or perhaps a better outline. But she is not afraid to paint.

She told us she's going to be an art teacher, no question about it. It's a mathematical certainty in her mind today. I offered my verbal assent, telling her that I was on board with that because it would make it easy to do RAGBRAI together if she had the summers off. But I was using the wrong paint-brush for this dream. No, she informed me. That wouldn't work. She'll be offering art classes that week for people who aren't on RAGBRAI. Probably kids. In fact, they'll be camping. She might have to borrow our large tent for them to all fit in, but it will be a week of art. And the plans kept tumbling out of her mouth, steady and out of order and bubbling, and I knew she could see it, see herself in it, this grand and specific dream.

I hope she draws a picture of this one. She usually draws a picture of the plan. Last year she started talking about this tree house her and her friend would build so that they could play there and keep the boys away. Again, this was a plan I could get on board. Then she showed me the drawing she had been working on.

You can see the strategic pulley-system, the rope ladder, and the list of supplies ready to fill it. The two of them have no tree big enough, no contractor on stand-by, no money, no materials, and no time. Yet there it stands. She's even made up formal invitations to announce it's grand opening to their friends. It's as real as anything I've ever built in my life.

My daughter is a dreamer, and it is perhaps what I love about her the most.

Adults like me need a dose of dreaming now and then. Maybe even more often that that. For a dream has life in it, much more so than do all the obstacles and limitations that we allow to fill our mind and dominate our sight. Dreams like Elise's dreams assume the best of the world. They are born of eternal optimism and are fed by a steady diet of images, fuzzy images, not entirely clear but real enough images somewhere in the back of our brain where we can see ourselves in this dream and we like who and what we see. 

Most dreams will not be discarded. Rather, they will fall by the wayside, unknowingly jostled out of the mind by this bump or that breeze, never to return to the journey. They will be replaced. They most likely will not come to fruition.

But the joy in painting in painting the dream! In speaking it and breathing it and sharing it, ignoring the critics and the obstacles and the laws of science and finance and the time/space continuum. I am unsure of the practical benefit. But I do know the effect on the soul.

I leave you with this. One of our favorite children's authors, Sandra Boynton, wrote a song in which the lyrics pierce right to the heart of this, and Ryan Adams was kind enough to provide the vocals. The video of the song, entitled "When Pigs Fly," is here. May we all look for the winged swine in our lives.