A mad dash

in

I had a conversation with the roommates last night and read a blog this morning that has gotten me thinking. The conversations have been flowing recently on provoking topics and I'm still not sure that we've landed anywhere worth exploring. I say to a friend last week that we go from glory to glory, that everything that moves the story forward is action, even if it feels like circles. Circles can be active too; though sometimes they're more like tornados, pulling everything into a vortex and spitting out destruction.

I don't want my life to terminate on itself.

You hear illustrations about the dash between the dates on a gravestone, what fills and what ought to fill that space. The truth is, friends, I don't care. I almost asked a group of friends this week what one thing they wanted to be said about them when they died. But I stopped because I wonder if it really matters what people say about us when we die.

I've been repeating a phrase to myself for the past week, crying over it, rejoicing over it, struggling over it: my life is not my own.

And that means that the dash is not my own either.

More people than ever have been asking me to write a book and I have all the same excuses (What do I have to say that has not already been said, and better? What type of book would I even write? I don't want to regret what is there, in black and white, so why bind and sell those foregone regrets?). But more and more my reason for not wanting to write a book is this: my life is not my own.

I don't need a legacy of words or my name on a cover. Gosh. I don't even need my name on this blog. Sometimes I wish I'd kept it anonymous, that all of you I know in real life didn't know it was me who put these words down. Sometimes I wish I could pretend that I haven't been writing since 2001 and that all these words belonged to some other person, in some other state, living some other life.

I'm convinced that the only story I have to tell is one in a forward motion, always moving forward, even if it lands on the same conclusions over and over again. I'm convinced that this sort of forum is the only forum I need for words because there is nothing to page through or underline. There is nothing to keep. There is nothing worth keeping.

My life isn't my own and I don't need the glory of anything more than the perpetual plod toward Him. And that's all this page is: a perpetual plod toward Him.

Each day different, new, growing, strengthened, weakened, encouraged, discouraged, true, real, me, certain, doubting, filled and one day it will be done. Archived away in some internet basement, where no one cares, because no one should care.

It's just a dash, nothing more.

One mad dash through life, finished.

For His glory alone.