God speaks to me.
Not in the crazy, serial killer kind of way (though indeed, you might think I’m crazy to say I hear God at all). But through prayer, through other people, and in a variety of other ways, including via Sunday sermons. There are occasional Sundays where I can’t stop taking notes while listening to my pastor, and these notes often get molded into blog posts.
This past weekend, I was on a roll. I jotted down notes for four posts that I was sure would be interesting, moving, and creative. I wrote one of the posts up Sunday night, and saved the rest for another time when I could set aside an hour or so to write away.
But last night, when I looked for my Sunday bulletin, I couldn’t find it. I suddenly felt dread in the bit of my stomach. I just knew it…my wife had thrown the bulletin away.
When I asked her about it, she said that yes, she’d thrown it away a day or two prior. I was aggravated…and that aggravation turned to anger. We had a little spat, and I demonstrated my point by marching away from the bedroom and to the couch, where I planned to sleep for the night.
That would show her!
As I lay in the living room, I started to think about my pride and, as I frequently always do, realized just how wrong I was. First of all, my wife was simply cleaning up – if the paper was so important to me, I should have put it somewhere safer. And so, in less than five minutes, I was back in my bed and we had made up.
But further, I thought about how I’d valued my drafts as irreplaceable. Why would these posts, not even half-written, be any better than any others I’d written? To be sure, I’m not especially proud of my writing, and I’m always floored when I find that a post has connected with readers.
Actually, in those times that I brainstorm two or three or four posts while listening to a sermon, I find that maybe only one ends up becoming a satisfactory (in my mind) post. The others end up in my wordpress trash can. I wish I could tell you all the great ideas I’ve had for posts that ended up being garbage when I actually sat down and started typing, but they’ve been deleted from my mind as well as my blog account.
Whether bloggers or artists or simple anime viewers, we could all probably use a little dose of humility in our lives, and sometimes that takes you throwing your pride right into the trash.
Of if that’s too drastic of a step, just do like I did, and have your spouse toss it for you.