Finding the Words

2018 was *not* my year. Between personal, professional and financial difficulties, I struggled in every way. Including with my faith; and with my writing. I hadn’t realized before how deeply connected the two were. Have you read any of my stuff? Yeah, I bet you didn’t see a connect there either. But it seemed the further I felt from God, the harder it was to reach inside and pull out anything creative. It was hard to care about something that felt, for the first time ever, useless.

I’ve had moments, years even, in my life where I was too busy, or too scared, to pursue my dream but I still wrote in those moments. I never walked away from that, I just did it for me. In many ways, to keep myself sane, it often felt. Until this year when I couldn’t string a sentence together and wasn’t bothered by the lack. I could barely generate an interest in reading, my second favorite activity.

As Christmas approached, I began to feel a loss. A yearn for mass, for ritual and rite, for the feeling of peace my faith always afforded. I caught myself humming while doing housework and realized it was one of my favorite hymns. I went to confession at the start of Advent and my priest told me how blessed I was to receive an invitation back to church. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

As the Epiphany approached, coincidentally (ironically?) I experienced an epiphany of my own when the video reel in my imagination flickered back to life. The urge to write is back. I had no idea how much I missed it. 

2018 may have not been my year and I’m not going to declare 2019 a comeback, that would be too akin to jinxing myself, but I am going to take this year as it comes. With humor, patience, and with faith. And we’ll see how it goes.