I had business cards printed in honor of launching this new place anticipating connections with people in the publishing world as I finish the book I am currently writing. I planned to order some “real” ones cohesive with my brand when this site went live. For the interim I had a sweet little design printed on beautiful card stock. They are perfectly me. If you didn’t already know, quality paper is like good thread count and great champagne. If you’ve never touched it, slept on it or drank it you’ll probably make it through life just fine, but once you have you’d pretty much sell your soul to make them yours. I always have a stack of books nearby and the red glasses are just smart, so I thought ordering fifty of these cards would give me something to hand out at Storyline. When it came to a title I was stumped. Who was I going to say I was? What is it that I do?
Am I am blogger who wants to be a writer? What is the difference? Am I writer who wants to be an author? Are you only an author when something is published on good paper? When did all this become so confusing and the lines this blurred?
Remember when you uncapped your Le pen in the coolest color and just let it slide across the smooth empty pages of your journal or notebook without any hesitation? There was no world wide web. We were not pushing “publish” on any and every thing pouring out of our minds and hearts. Our words were sacred, sincere and safe. We kept them like a treasure map back to our true selves knowing for sure we would need them again someday. At a young age we already felt the propensity to lose our way and betray our own confidence for false desires so we wrote like mad.
I love this passage from Annie Dillard’s “Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters.”
She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child’s perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here–the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay.
Did I really want to pay soul currency to tell my story? I had this very real opportunity once. When it came time to sign my words over to someone I didn’t know or trust I ran fast and far away.
I began a blog in 2008 to show my family the cute pictures I took of my girls and keep track of some daily gifts. I’d been through a wicked pregnancy and moved to Ohio from the Washington DC area not long after my Danica was born. I went from being Director of Marketing for a real estate development firm to writing SQL code in my pajamas day and night. In between changing diapers, doing flashcards with my five year old and crying (there was so much crying), I continued to write the whole truth free hand in my journals. Oh, and I may have kept a bottle of vodka in the freezer too. It was just for really hard days, I promise. I went from wearing beautiful suits and amazing shoes while carrying my Louis Vuitton bag into fabulous lunches at swanky spots like The Hay-Adams to a desolate place I never in a million years thought God would be so cruel to ask me to live again. The old blog is still published out there. I named it “Every Day Simple Abundance”.
There were only two blogs I regularly read during this time. I followed my childhood friend Angie’s blog, Spring of Joy and this other little place where I met Jesus every day at the foot of the cross. A few of you may read there now. It was Ann Voskamp’s, A Holy Experience. It was small and quiet, tucked away on a farm in Canada, and I think just a few hundred in the whole world were faithful readers then. I like places like this. I’m suspicious of anything that grows too large. I don’t care for big crowds or lots of acquaintances who aren’t really friends, and I hate a bandwagon. I believed pure things are not for the masses and any road into the Kingdom of God has to be narrow with a tiny gate. “One Thousand Gifts” didn’t seem like a stretch to me. I began keeping a gratitude journal in 1999 when I read Sarah Ban Breathnach’s book “Simple Abundance” after seeing her on Oprah. Although I was far from God at this point of my life I will tell you the act of writing God’s common grace to me day after day was perhaps the single most important thing bringing me back to saving Grace. Some days I was just writing Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Over and over again I was thankful for food, drink, shelter warmth and sleep. When I began to read Ann’s words regularly I know for sure it was God’s way of pouring truth back into my heart after years away from Him. It was in fact “revolutionary”. It turns out most of the world was craving this discipline of gratitude as much as I was.
In 2009 when Danica was eighteen months old her neck went crooked. I continued to blog through some hard months of looking for relief for her pain and diagnosis, but I mostly hid. I sat at her door at night and pled the blood of Jesus over my daughter who would scream herself to sleep. In September 2009 we heard the word “Chiari” for the first time, and it changed our world forever. It wasn’t until after her first brain surgery in November 2009 failed we knew we were facing not just a battle but an all out war. I began writing at danicajean.blogspot.com, also known as teamdanica.com.
I have faithfully written there for over four years. I’ve paid some high rent as I bore my soul to anyone who would read. Many began to find my little blogger spot because themselves or their son or daughter were told they had Chiari too. As our story unfolded I was diagnosed as well and years of physical pain began to make sense. People cried with us, prayed for us, gave to us and carried us through a long dark tunnel of cruel suffering.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, “God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrusts the thing we have prayed for in our face, A GAUNTLET WITH A GIFT IN IT.”
This is my book.
“Gauntlet with a Gift.”
I am seeing some kind of light at the end of a tunnel.
I am ready to talk about the gift more than the gauntlet.
This is why I needed a new place to write.
It will be different. I will still write about our life and the health challenges I mention in my biography, but I will give you glimpses into the windows of what has sustained me during this journey. There will be beautiful words, music, poetry, good books, great stories about other overcomers, and gifts. I mean the real kind too; care packages from the best friend you always wanted.
I’ve decided I’m a blogger, a writer and an author now.
I hope you’ll sit on my comfy sofa in a patch of sunshine and make yourself more than my acquaintance.
I have changed my mind about how big God is and the way He uses the small, weak things of this world to grow His kingdom. I’ve seen a camel pass through the eye of a needle. I know for sure the gifts are there even when we can’t quite make out the shape of them yet. He’s answering the prayers, even shoving them in our face if we would only SEE.
Open your eyes with me. Walk along side me. I feel a light. Let’s head that way together.
