It's an overcast, drizzly Saturday morning - a chill of a breeze is dancing thru the back door carrying the crisp taste of fall on it's tongue. I hug my mug a little closer. (It's decaf, but it's Stumptown, so it ain't yucky.) Everything tastes so alive this morning. I feel sparkly.
Dreaming.
I just exchanged Instagram notes with my friend Kate whom I haven't seen in too many years - since we both still had toddle bugs running around our ankles. I told her I still didn't know what I want to be when I grow up. Mind you, I'm nigh on to fiddy--okay, super high 40's--and I haven't figured it out. She asked, "Do we ever really need to know?" Do we? I know I'll never be a career woman. I hate pantsuits. It seems that the domestic life is my destiny. But that doesn't mean I have to give up my dreams! It means I have more time to pursue them. So I'm dreaming. I'm writing down the dreams in my (too-haphazard-to-be-called-a-) bullet journal. They shift and morph and grow and sometimes shatter, but new ones sprout in their place every day. One of my dreams is to be a writer. (Not a published book writer - that's not a current dream, anyway. I reserve the right to change that thought.) I like writing pithy or excessively goofy comments on my friends' posts on FB and IG. I like writing letters. I sometimes like to journal.
Last spring I took a great writing class from my friend Sarah and wrote some little ditties. Starts. Tries. Valiant efforts. Some of them could be nurtured into short stories. Maybe. Some of them were straight up therapy on paper. Some were drivel. But one thing they all were was storytelling.
Storytelling.
Telling our stories is something that every earth-born person has a right and quite possibly a NEED to do. Every individual has their own very unique story. Even if two siblings grow up in the same home, go to the same school and share the same friends, their stories will be so different. They will each have their personal skew on every event and conversation. And when we read or hear other people's stories, we experience them thru our life filter. So even the exact written story will exude a different sparkle to each individual reader, like facets on a diamond. (Faulty analogy, but you get my point, I'm sure.) Which is why I want you to read a very special book.
I have had the privilege of pre-reading one of the most beautiful stories of love and redemption in Edie Wadsworth's memoir All the Pretty Things, due out September 20th (it's available for early orders on Amazon!!). Such a beautiful, raw story of a girl growing up in the Appalachian hills with trouble and hope running parallel lines through her childhood. It wasn't for lack of love, rather brokenness and circumstance that created hardship in her life. Any of what Edie went through could have overwhelmed the average person. "I was probably only seven or eight, but I could feel the weight of that moment. All the things they couldn't say. All the tears unnoticed. His fears. Her heartache. The whole of it was almost too much to see." But through it all she had a miraculous amount of hope and strength, and love for her family and friends, and a faith that wouldn't let go of her.
I want to share more with you! So I will. But not today. More soon.
