Allowing God to love and transform

This semester, I'm taking a writing class that has not been working out for me.

Usually in the creative process for any major project, I fumble around for a while -- the first half of a semester -- failing miserably and repeatedly until finally something falls into place, and I figure out what I'm trying to communicate.

In this class, though, I've just plain flailed. No sense, no magic. Just me writing pages and pages and living in the tension of not knowing what I'm doing and wanting desperately to figure it out soon.

This is a big deal to me; writing is tied integrally to the core of who I am, how I see and know and let myself be seen and known.

Writing is how I give my life away, how I lay it down for others and for God. Thus, this class has been an academic and personal struggle.

The other day, one of my students wrote a blog post about realizing during her first semester of college that what she'd always thought she wanted to do wasn't what she was going to do in life, and how this left her feeling directionless.

After reading her words and thinking about how to comment as her writing teacher, I was able to put into words something I've been learning this semester through my own challenges with writing:

Life is a lot like the writing process. Sometimes, it's effortless, magic. You are inspired; everything works and is beautiful.

Sometimes, it is dry and hard and feels like you won't ever be able to write another word or have another coherent thought again. Your labors don't bear fruit, and everything seems wrong.

Sometimes, it is between these extremes, and you're just putting in the work it takes to get to something useful. Nothing here is forever; with life and with writing, it's all part of the process.

When Missy and I were in Romania last May, we thought we were barely going to make it to the train station in time to catch the only train out of the little town that would get us back to Bucharest in time for our flight.

We ran to the train station in silence, and once we got there, ran around like crazy people hollering to each other and looking for our train we couldn't find.

It turns out the 14:00 in military time printed on our ticket meant 2 p.m., not 1, like we'd thought. Sometimes you think the train is leaving, and it hasn't even come yet.

In her book "Radical Presence: Teaching as Contemplative Practice," Mary Rose O'Reilley writes, "It takes as long as it takes."

I've been reminded lately that God is with me in the living out of the decisions I make, that he and his grace are as present in the middle of a decision as they were when he was leading me into it; he will never leave me or forsake me (Deuteronomy 31:6).

Life is not necessarily about answers or constant happiness or excelling at something I'm supposed to be good at. It's about knowing God more deeply each moment, about loving more deeply whoever I'm around, wherever I am, and allowing myself to be loved and transformed by these people and my God, too.