Back to My Roots

 Not the ones that need freshened up. ;) Although I will say I need to get back to those, too! 

My writing roots.

When I spent all those years at IWU, I appreciated how all my supervisors (hey, Lois!!) made space for me to write whenever I could because they saw that it was something I brought to the team table. Of course I had to spend most of my time behind a good, old-fashioned adding machine, rather than a keyboard, but I still wrote whenever I had the chance. 

In fact, that was how I got that job to begin with. Back in my student worker days, they hired me to work on a policies and procedures manual. (It may sound perfectly awful to you, but I actually had a lot of fun with it.) And then I moved on to writing mass correspondence for the office, material for the website and other publications, and just about anything else they could find to offer me.

When I moved on to radio life, I wrote interview questions, promos, newsletters, web content, and more. (And I only had to spend one day a week behind a calculator...downgraded from my trusty adding machine.)

Then I had five years of working on my own, and I could write whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted! And I did!

My brief time at the church gave me a little bit of writing - mostly in my work with women's ministry.

Writing at WillowBridge looks very different. I don't have time to explore much of my own writing, but I really appreciate getting to write all kinds of things for the building. (Yes, I've even gone back to dabbling in policies and procedures.)

But recently I've had the chance to write a talk I'll be sharing at a fundraiser in a few months. It felt like the days of yore...hiding away in our office and writing until I'd forgotten what time it was or when I ate my last snack. I wrote the words that poured into my mind, and when they dried up, I put the document away and tried again on a later day.

I'd forgotten how wonderful it was to write all long and free like that. I'd forgotten what it was like to feel the ideas and wait to see how they came together on the screen in front of me.

After I finished the draft, I summoned Ryan and delivered my usual speech about how this was all very raw and unedited and would need a lot of work...but I shared it with him anyway. I took the last breath after the final sentence and looked up to see if he seemed lost or excited.

He loved it.

That rush of knowing I had something workable in my hands came flooding back in a way I haven't known for too long.

I have a feeling God will always move me around to one kind of work or another. He may present me with an adding machine, a microphone, a keyboard, or an apartment building, but I hope He always gives me a chance to go back to those writing roots. That's where my heart feels most at home. The other things are good and fulfilling in their own ways. But putting together the words...that's home for me. Back to my roots. Back where I belong.