I read something today to the effect that people can tell a lot about the type of leader one is by whether s/he attracts positive or negative people. I thought about that for a good while, mulling it over in my head and thinking about the profound truth contained in those few words. 

I think back to a time not so long ago when a good number of the people I associated with on a regular basis were very negative people who kept negativity stirred up constantly, and it affected my family and me in some pretty unsettling ways. I didn’t realize it while these people were being pruned from my life, but when I read that statement today, suddenly it all made sense.

I really had to take stock of how I had allowed myself to fall into such a deep pit of negativity. Had I just allowed it, or had I invited it? It didn’t just happen overnight, and I do remember occasions when I knew I was saying something displeasing to God and I didn’t heed His voice. Yes, that is how it happened. Doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. It was my own depravity and neglect and disobedience, plain and simple.

Thankfully, there is His grace, always available and always complete when we repent and turn back to Him. I am grateful beyond description for that.

It’s kind of amazing how much lighter I have felt over the past couple of months. And I know it isn’t just because there are fewer negative people in my life, either. No, reading One Thousand Gifts has brought some pretty significant change for me. I don’t remember any other book that I finished and wanted nothing more than to start back at chapter one and read the whole thing through again right then.

By contrast, the people I’ve been creating and building friendships with lately are some of the most lovely people I’ve ever met, most of them bloggers I’ve met through the Bloom Book Club study of OTG. What beautiful ladies, these, precious and treasured already.

And so I wonder if maybe this is to be where my guts spill out onto the floor, onto the keyboard, onto the screen, my fleshing out of a million thoughts swirling at once with no rhyme or reason, not yet something sweet and edifying to go on Write, Pray, Love or a decent response to One Thousand Gifts, but just me, Lisa Easterling dot com, my raw heart open and beating out loud for the world to see.

Baked potatoes are placed piping hot on little white diner-style plates for lunch. Vitamin C and protein in the form of cheese and butter and sour cream to complete the healing of respiratory illness that thankfully usually only lurks once a year. My potato, cut, falls open in the perfect shape of an elongated heart. Gift. I eat it slowly, skin and all, grateful that something so healthy tastes so wonderful.

Back at my desk with my little diner plate off to my left, I find myself frequently returning to my contemplative posture, head in hands and quiet, thinking. Sometimes there’s just too much at once. Too much sickness, too much loss, too much to do, too much clutter, too many schedules, too many worries, too many expectations, too many steps to do something simple. I have an invitation to submit writing for a company I’ve loved for years, and I look at the necessary steps and feel like the walls are closing in. Maybe another time, I think. Again. Deep down I wonder if it will ever happen, and a too-big part of me opines that it probably won’t. I’m too tired to argue.

I cut the tops off my potato heart and chew without tasting, my mind engaged elsewhere. This must be what Natalie Goldberg meant when she said artists are moody, depressive people. Only I don’t want to go down the road many of the more famous ones have traveled. I would love to keep living for a good long time yet.

I’ve been writing verse and sentiments for myself and others for as long as I can remember. I’ve been told that I am one of the best at wording the thoughts of others so perfectly it’s like I am walking around in their heads and hearts. Will I ever do these things on a higher professional level? I don’t know. But can I do it? I know I can. I have, many times and in many situations. It’s one of a small handful of things about which I actually feel confident in stating, “Yes. I am good at that!”

When on the rare occasion I ask if anyone is listening (reading), the responses are somewhat predictable though varied. There’s the placating, the preachy, and the philosophical. And then there’s the occasional genuine straight-shot from the heart, the truly helpful ones that I ponder for a while and carry around with me.

I think somewhere along the line I will have to separate myself from my writing more, not become wounded when people I know and love–people who know and love me back–don’t seem interested in reading what I write. That’s easy to theorize about but not so easy to put into practice, not when my writing feels like such a personal part of who I am. What flows from my heart and mind through my fingers is a part of me, something birthed from the artistic parts of my being, something I dare to hold out to a waiting world. It’s hard to hold out an offering and feel the weight of it sitting long in the hand untouched. It gets heavier and heavier and I admit sometimes I am tempted to toss it on the ground and walk away.

I am blogging quite often at Write, Pray, Love lately. I invite readers to head over there to check things out.

I am also blogging my thoughts during a book study of Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts HERE.

I won’t stop blogging here, but right now those two blogs have most of my attention. Hope to see you there!