Voskamp II: Surprise

-

She writes about her own history of anxiety and stress and her ongoing wrestling with it.  She writes about joy and where it comes from, a lack of expectation.  Joy comes from surprise, the opposite of being continually disappointed with what you don't have, a symptom of our age.  Therefore, thankfulness is possible because of surprise.  And she writes about not punishing her kids over their rowdiness, how she tries to open to God.  I have much to be tense about right now, much to worry about.  Yet worry adds nothing, not one cubit to your stature.  I want to control this situation and it is beyond mine.

She tells a powerful story about a homeless man who accosts her and a group of teens from her church's youth group.  They are on the main drag of Toronto, headed toward a mission.  These re coutnry kids, and a city is so alien to them.  The rought-drug-burned out homeless man (so Canada has them, too?) frightens them but can recite Romans 7 and 8 from memory.  Voskamp says he and she are the same underneath the facade.  I don't know that I agree with that--another post for another day.  But she says something wonderful:
What is time for if not to bless?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kallman's Syndrome: The Secret Best Kept

-
I went to my cardiologist yesterday.   Every year I have to wear a Holter monitor for a day because of a heart ablation I had in 2007.   If you don’t know what a Holter monitor is, it’s a 24-hour mobile, wires-hanging-off-your-body EKG.   The nurse practitioner saw me, (not the doctor, which is ok because his voice puts me to sleep).   She was very sweet.   She asked me if I was still taking Estradiol and Progesterin.   “No,” I said. “I’ve totally gone off those.   I was on them for a very long time and I wanted to be sure to stop.” What I didn’t tell her is how long I actually had taken those hormones.   37 years.   I started with HRT when I was 17 because I have Kallman’s Syndrome.   You may never meet a person who has this condition.   It only affects 1 in 10,000 people (or 1 in 86,000, according to one source) so that’s quite a range and far more males have it than females (as do most negative things).   So, being female, I am quite an oddit
Read more

Annie Dillard on Writing Advice and Some Observations

-
  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/write-as-if-you-were-dying-read-annie-dillard-s-greatest-writing-advice?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us I frequently listen to a podcast called THE HABIT. Its host is Jonathan Rogers, who for the most part interviews writers with a Christian focus. He is a better interviewer than I, and he runs a community of writers. I recommend him. I do have to say that the podcast makes me feel very shallow as a writer.  One reason is that Jonathan Rogers has a signature question, Who are the writers that make you want to write? If I ever land on his program (a dream), I will need an answer to that one, and right now I don't have one. Sure, there are writers I like, lots of them, but reading them doesn't send me to my computer to get cracking. They are more likely to make me think, you've got no business doing this writing gig.  Actually, bad or mediocre writers motivate me more although I am not exactly proud of that. And the fact that what I want to
Read more