I know not how

Once I had my own plan for my life....

Ruth Simons of gracelaced.com wrote in a recent blog post:

We tend to strive and maneuver ourselves to gain the life we think we want, but I dare say, the Lord is merciful to cause the most wondrous blessings to occur apart from fine-tuned plans and well-rehearsed strategies. That's how he gets the glory and we get to be his children. He delights in using those who think they've been forgotten, whose giftings aren't fully realized, whose daily decision to be faithful right where they are trumps being fabulous elsewhere. (emphasis original)

I so relate to this. I strove and maneuvered through my 30's for my own ambitions, only to crash and burn. Now I sit feeling forgotten and like I've failed in realizing my giftings.

I'm focusing on the wrong part of her sentence.

Ruth Simons is writing from the other side of this experience, the blessing side, and it gives me hope. Hope that the place where I'm at could lead to God using my talents for His glory. That He would delight in that?

I don't know what that might look like. One "daily decision to be faithful right where I am" means working full time at an office. I used to dream of writing full time while my husband supported me (until I made the big time anyway), but that's a dream I've given up on. His disability check all goes for his medical care, the part that my company-sponsored insurance plan doesn't cover.

I do have an unexpected blessing in my job--I'm now writing for a living. It's technical writing, documentation for the software my employer produces. I'm thankful to the Lord that He maneuvered me into a corporate writing job. It certainly wasn't by my maneuvering!

I still feel drawn to writing that's a little more creative, and I still feel the Lord wants me to blog. I decided I should write one blog post a month for the first half of 2016 and re-evaluate mid-year. So here I am on January 30th banging out a post that will go out today or tomorrow, ready or not.

If the Lord's plan for my writing involves more than software documentation, it'll happen on the Saturday mornings and the occasional other little chinks of time between work and laundry and dog-walking. And the following scripture indicates to me that I don't have to know how it's going to happen.

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”--Mark 4:26-29 (ESV)

The maker movement is simply rediscovery

I was listening to the Woolful podcast recently and the interviewee said something that really got me thinking.

We used to make, to mend, because it was a necessity to life, Now, I'm seeing more and more, people are making to mend their bodies and their minds. It's a therapy....

-Tif Fussel

I re-started crocheting and knitting in 2008, when my husband was in the hospital for six weeks following surgery. I learned to knit and crochet in childhood, but hadn't touched it in years. However, I was starting to go a bit stir-crazy sitting by his hospital bed, and I suddenly thought, "I could be crocheting!" I made time to pick up a pattern book with instructions to refresh my memory, and some yarn, and it's been a constant ever since.

I think it's historically been common for women to work on their handwork when sitting at the bedside of a sick person. Of course, historically, women always had sewing, mending, etc. needing done; I've seen an old photograph taken somewhere in Scandinavia showing young women knitting as they walked across the fields. Because it's not that long ago that if anyone were going to have warm socks or sweaters in the winter, someone had to knit them. If you were going to have clothes, someone had to sew them by hand. You had to take every opportunity to work on clothing items, when you weren't churning butter or washing your pots & pans & dishes by hand.

Most of us wouldn't want to go back to the days when all but the very wealthy HAD to be makers to survive. We like that our knitting, crocheting, spinning, etc. is a leisure activity. But more than that, like Tif Fussel I'm hearing many makers say that it's benefiting them in certain ways.

Evidence is growing that needle arts are good for the brain. It may even delay the onset of dementia. Simple knitting can serve to help you pay attention in meetings and such---see Cognitive Anchoring by Heather Ordover. There's even a book called Crochet Saved My Life. People are crediting handcrafts with emotional healing.

And yet, I doubt the old hand-knitters of the Yorkshire Dales considered knitting therapeutic. They churned out socks, gloves, and fisherman's sweaters day and night for pennies per item to supplement their meager incomes (until the industrial revolution put them out of business) .

So how did knitting go from drudgery to the magic cure-all?

I think the transformation of western economies to where so many of us are knowledge workers of one stripe or another, where all of our work is done with a keyboard and a mouse, is no more good for us than any kind of excess. Staring at a screen all day starves a fundamental aspect of how we were created. 

We were created to do and make things with our hands. Our brains as well as our bodies were wired for it. So when you've been neglecting this aspect of your inborn nature and then you start using it---it just feels good!

There's something about doing things with our hands that keeps us in tune. And we still need to think as well. We don't need to chuck everything else and just knit all day... what we need is balance. 

Some people do have a calling to knit a lot, to design knitwear, and so forth. And those people should also spend some time doing other things that aren't knitting. Like baking, balancing their budgets, bicycling. You can get a repetitive stress injury from knitting as surely as from keyboarding. Those Yorkshire knitters could have used a break from knitting; alas, they were in survival mode.

We modern denizens of Ravelry, and other makers, occupy a unique position in the history of humanity. Yes, we have to specialize to earn a living--but we don't usually have to work day and night at that specialty. We can earn enough in 40 hours a week to give our leisure time over to something that exercises other capacities. It is actually possible for us to have some balance.

So actually, becoming a maker isn't some kind of salvation. It's just a way to wake up a part of your brain that might have been atrophying. Be grateful for it, sure. But don't elevate it overmuch.

Unemployed, redux

This time I'm really unemployed. The grace period is over, the fat lady has sung.

Ryan International Airlines is no more. The link goes to the Wikipedia article, which is mostly accurate, except that the Chapter 7 filing was delayed while purchase offers were entertained. So 24 of us stayed on to keep the operating certificate on life support in case someone purchased it.

The company that won the "bidding" in the bankruptcy court insisted they had the purchase price on hand, but in the end they only transferred $200,000 of it. They were given an extra day and then the door was closed. My last day of work was February 27, 2013.

I'd been toying with the idea of looking for a new job since the Chapter 11 filing a year ago, enough that I'd updated my resume. Too bad I didn't get serious about looking.

I'm now in the process of applying for unemployment, getting some kind of interim medical insurance, etc. And trying to not let myself waste time just because I can.

I did finish the sweater I started knitting in December, just in time to wear it to the retirement party of our CFO last Saturday night... which morphed, of course, into a "wake" for all of us. (He joked that we stole his thunder.)

I've never filed unemployment before. And I'm still reeling from the shock of it all. I guess I am, anyway, because I have a hard time getting to sleep at night. There have been nights I was still awake at 3 am.

To be continued....

Unemployed

I lost my job Friday, January 11, when my employer abruptly went out of business.

Now it's Sunday evening*, and I think it's just started to hit me in the last few hours. I feel heavy, like the Earth's gravity suddenly doubled.

To add insult to injury, I still have to go in to the office tomorrow... a handful of us were tapped to box up files and whatnot. I'd rather cocoon for a day or two. Or on a practical level, get busy searching for a new job. (Not to say I haven't paged through job listings already...)

The usual self-recriminations. The writing's been on the wall; my husband's been bugging me to look for a different job for two years. I thought about it; I did update my resume.

Also, I started this blog, though not quite knowing what for. Because way down deep, I truly would love to build some kind of creative enterprise. Like, say, Heather Ordover of the CraftLit podcast.

I had actually almost forgotten that, I'd stuffed it down so far. But I heard about Seth Godin's new book The Icarus Deception and checked out the audiobook version from my library. I haven't even finished chapter 1 yet, but it reminded me.

And yet.

My husband is on disability. He's trying to start a business, but even once he gets it going he will only be able to work at it part time. We can't get by long without me having a solid income.

It was when I realized he couldn't support us that I started stuffing my desire for something other than the 8-5 grind. His medical issues have required good insurance, and I've developed a couple medical issues of my own over the years.

That said, I'm not sure Godin is saying you have to be self-employed to live the way he's advocating. I hope he will get into how to live creatively in the context of a J.O.B.

And then? how about another curve ball?

I remembered during church today something I heard on the Joni and Friends podcast recently. She interviewed Steve Saint, a missionary who has suffered a spinal cord injury. He said,

...We have to decide in life whether we’re going to write the story, or whether we’re going to let God write the story. And, I decided a long time ago that I’m going to let God write the story. It’s in the tough times that we really have to decide, okay, am I really going to trust God to write my story?

THAT is what I need to do. That's not really a curve ball—that's a relief. Of course I will apply for jobs and do all the other things needful in this situation. But I'll try to remember to do them prayerfully, remembering He's going to give me my daily bread... and He's going to write my story.


*I wrote this on Sunday evening, but didn't post until Monday.