Putting a hold on One A Week: Revision Edition. I started. I spent a couple of days rewriting the terrible story, long enough to know I still think it’s worth revising. One afternoon I used commute time to make a voice memo I planned to transcribe as a new opening. But I also stabbed my notebook with a pen and threw it across the room and very nearly chucked a shelf of notebooks out the window.

What kept me from throwing six years of notebooks out the window? Only knowing that the gesture couldn’t remain anonymous when I live in a stack of apartments with my coworkers. I was yelling, though, so one or two neighbors might have been privy to my rant re: everything.

I wish the yelling and sobbing gave way to bolstered hope. I try at many things and I try very hard at a few things and this week it seemed none of my effort mattered more than chance. So I had a couple of dark days. And I haven’t learned anything. This is where I am. Can I be faithful where I am? Can I enjoy the gifts I have? I made a list in my notebook of the gifts I have. Making a list did not make me more grateful. I’ve been like this before, low and clear and aware of keeping flesh on my bones. I’ve waited for an answer before.

But I don’t know what I’m asking this time. I don’t know the name of this restless sorrow in my body. I’m tired enough.

And I felt stupid this week. I felt really stupid for setting up another writing game to generate finished pieces when I’m afraid to send anything out for publication, when no one is asking for my work, when I suppose there isn’t a market for whatever I am. I make too much of this about myself. There are lies I like to trace because they sound better than the truth. I’m nearing the end of me. This happens over and over, incrementally yielding to Christ. Can I remain faithful?

So my revision project is on hold. Maybe only a week or two. I’d like to decide what to do about feeling stuck here. I’d like to lean in to God more and hear truth. I need to practice a difficult kind of faithfulness, living in boundary lines I haven’t drawn for myself. No wonder the restless sorrow.