Standing my Ground

I have always been the type of writer to stand my ground on my beliefs. Sure, I know for a lot of you it is hard, but for me it is more a moral stance. I will not jump outside my domain and watch or write something I think to be immoral.

Often I am shunned for being a ‘snob’ because I set my standards so high, these are standards that I choose to live by and don’t judge you as a person for not living by. This is MY moral compass and as a woman who isn’t getting any younger, I feel it necessary to stand my ground the closer I get to being PUT in the ground.

I watch as some claim a moral compass, some claim to be a Christian but their behavior and actions speak something totally opposite. Why is that? Sometimes I sit and watch, sometimes I try to comprehend, often times I’m scratching my head wondering why I am so different. Why do I see wrongs where there are wrongs and others see wrongs as right? Am I missing something? Are you going to tell me that God DOESN’T see you betraying Him? Or do you think He’ll just overlook the tiny things?

I started this writing blog with the right intentions but watched as it flopped. Slowly being here for no one to read and even less to comment. I didn’t write to get comments, but I did write to be read. What good is writing for yourself if no one is going to read you? I think that is why I lost interest in writing. As I wrote and posted (here or other places) no one was reading me. One person to LIKE everything I write does not encourage me to continue writing.

I went from 200+ posts a year to 60 if I’m lucky 80 by years end. This isn’t the successful journey I envisioned for myself. I persevered…persisted…plowed on and in many dark tunnels I crawled out to see the light, but when I got to the end of the dark and musty tunnel, no one was there.

Sure, I’ll hear, “God is there.” I know this! “God’s on your side.” I know this too. I have so encapsulated myself with God that it has scared people off leaving me alone (not totally because I KNOW God is there) in my writing journey. Sometimes I wished the computer and internet had never come into my life and that I would have stayed the type woman that I was molded into. I left that world for the virtual world and have to wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere on the path. Granted, it was a path to meeting new friends but I wonder…

I know God has something planned for me and it’s not in the virtual social world of facebook or the extremely weird social format of Twits, I mean Twitter. It’s out here in the real world of beauty, nature and reality.

I WILL revive my writing blog perhaps come September. I WILL use my God-given talent of writing to further my goals. I WILL, I WILL, I WILL!  For now, I’ll await the season’s change so I can feel alive again. I’ll wait for the tapping of marbles rolling on the tin roof in the form of rain. The sound and the new season will revive in me what I’ve been waiting for to breathe the life of writing once again. 

I will stand my ground and firmly plant my feet in the Light of truth. My writing will soar as the eagles! I’ll do it with or without you, I have God, that’s all I need!

Poetry Sunday ~ Giving Thanks

 

Job 8: 13 So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish:

Giving Thanks...

 ***

For all we are and all we do

we give our thanks each day.

We live, grow, change and mend

I give my thanks and pray.

I thank my mother and father

for all the things they gave.

Within their hand they held my life

but only One could save.

I led the life He wanted for me

although the road was rough.

I never look back with any regret.

the unpaved journey was tough.

The path was laid before we were born

the forks were all in place.

Which we chose was a cosmic bend

that altered time and space.

I found a cross in my walk

as I wandered through each year.

Whimsical times and frenzied mind

He made it all come clear.

The crystal shell lay in shards

glass was torn to pieces.

He put them all together again

My love for Him never ceases!

I thank the Lord for carrying me

through life’s seasoned highway.

I’m mended now because of Him,

No longer are things done my way.

It’s His way or No WAY!

A Blogger No More

Job 13: 13 Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will.

***

I know I’ve whined and moaned about this before, but something is telling me to just give it up. Why?

1) I find no joy in blogging anymore – as you can tell probably from my non-posting?

2) I don’t care to write for myself anymore – tired of pretending there’s an audience out there that likes reading me.

3) I used to find joy in blogging, sharing, comments and meeting friends: I have it no more – all has become silent like the caverns in my mind.

4) Writing has dwindled to a grocery list—and what I do write is probably taken as malicious and misguided.

5) When I find joy in writing, or have something the emptiness might enjoy, I’ll be sure to share.

I don’t like summer by any means whatsoever. I love winter, I enjoy spring and fall is a pleasant season. But summer is just a season where everybody wears next to nothing, prances around for all the voyeurs to see. It is a season of nothingness and shows people for their true colors for sure.

When I go shopping or out in public—even in the summer, my body is covered. Why? Because it is my sacred temple and it is not for people to gawk at, look down upon, or to lust after, it is my temple! Sacred!

I can’t go out and enjoy my garden because the flies think I’m the next best thing to a dead carcass, I’m there to eat. I slather my body in vanilla – which I read was good to deter flies, but when you forget to put it on, you realize that vanilla REALLY works! But then there’s the heat, the long drawn out days of heat. Lounging in the heat is no fun! The flies find the one spot you missed and gnaw at you like an over-ripe peach.

My work in the yard is not enjoyable because I need someone to start the old mower for me and with my beau working and Adam in the healing stages of a surgical procedure, it is all falling on my hands which takes a toll on my mind, body and soul. Mowing is my meditative release from this ugly world I live in.

Sure I see the beauty in each day. Wake up with a renewed love of this world as I watch the birds drink from my homemade birdbath, land on a branch and specifically tweet to me a big thank you!

But I think my long summer is drawn out by being homebound, seeing the outside world once or twice a month and when I do see it, I want to run back home and curl up on the sofa. While my man may enjoy the heat, working on Saturdays and Sundays, missing church, finding pleasure in being out and around people, and being able to shop at his leisure; I find myself in a sheltered world of no movement, shades drawn (so the sun don’t heat the house) and no AC because it costs too much.

I’m alone to do what; clean, wash clothes, my every day mundane chores? Maybe then I could write? No, writing has been sucked out of me like everything else, so I’ll just dwindle until something pulls me back into the realm of the living. For now…I’ll be a  ‘nilla zombie.

Be well people.

Pss. 102: 7 I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top.

Poetry Sunday ~ Isolation

Isolation

***

The house echoes of the emptiness found inside

like an unending tunnel where light is obscure.

The noise erupts with no one to confide

My lips are parched, as my heart lay pure.

Loneliness wraps my body in its outstretched arms;

nestles me in the warmth of a longing embrace.

I am alone in the silence that bears down and harms

the fullness of my being in this comely place.

The violence erupts but it is far from me

and all I can do is bow my head in prayer

as the isolation swallows my sanity

I seek to find you but you’re not there.

My only friend in sorrowful times of longing

is the empty space of my voice unheard;

Isolation traps me in the field of belonging

Left unattended with the pain I’ve incurred.

The solitude has me in its restless clutch

as no one is here to hold my hand.

I long for someone; anyone’s touch;

so alone in seclusion our beating hearts stand.

Poetry Sunday ~ Disillusion

Ps. 109:29 Let mine adversaries be clothed with shame, and let them cover themselves with their own confusion, as with a mantle.

Disillusion

 ***

You say you love

but do not know

the meaning of the word.

you say you care but can not bear

all things that you have heard.

You say you need

but do you know

the necessity of your own

you say you want

all things they haunt

and never make a home.

You say you see

all of me

but do you really know.

the depth and breadth

of my soul, to no one

will I show!

You try to beguile

this is true,

you are not what you seem.

You give you take

the heart of me

but will not dim my beam.

A ray of light

shines forth from me

no longer a part of the fusion.

I walked away to

a brighter day as

you wallow in disillusion.

Show vs. Tell

Joni’s going to write a blog post today.

Joni sits at her desk, pencils, paper, stapler surrounding her. A deep sigh leaves her mouth as she sits contemplating, ready to tap on the keys preparing to write today’s blog.

Aha! I think I’ll write about SHOW vs. Tell! In the first sentence I told you what Joni was going to do. In the second sentence I SHOWED you.

I often read from beginning writers, ‘What is the difference in show vs. tell?’ I read many mentor’s critiques exclaiming, ‘You need to show more than tell’.

Showing is more specific in terms as it lays out the picture for you. General terms are good when you need to tell when something is happening that is brief in the story. Whereas, showing moves the story along from point A to point B.

To tell a story, one only needs to say,

Mary went to the store.

To help in getting the picture across to your reader, the ones who are following your every word, you need to learn how to SHOW them the story.

Mary grabbed her purse, hurried out the front door to walk down to the corner store. The screen door slammed as her mother called from behind, “Don’t forget the bread.”

You can see Mary in your mind, can’t you? You no longer are holding a non-descriptive image of Mary, you now see a woman grabbing her purse and rushing out the door, only to be halted by the voice of her mother.

Think of yourself reading a book. You don’t start at the end, you begin at the first page. You take it slowly and read one page at a time so you can grasp the entire picture.

Taken out of context, you can speed read a page here and there but do you fulfill your journey of enjoyment? Showing and telling can give you the same information. But with the showing the reader gets to savor each and every word in a visual manner.

Creating a mental picture for the reader is important if you care for them enough to read to the end. Children love fairy tales where they don’t need a lot of the weighted down imagery; they get picture books to supply the images. But novels or short stories need to tap into the mental cinema of the reader’s mind.

Telling is fine for trivial things like it was a stormy day. If the storm is essential to moving the story along or part of the immediate scene then showing should be done. Don’t over do it with the imagery so no one says you’re padding your work. Showing should come as a natural flow to you.

I was sad when my dog died.

This is telling you how I felt when my dog died.

I was miserable when my dog died. It hurt so much I could just spit. I never expected him to die and now he’s left me alone and lonely for companionship.

This is padding the telling and not really showing you how I felt. You read that my dog died, I hurt, and I felt alone.

Now let me try to SHOW you how I felt.

Today I was utterly distracted when the puppies in the park were playing Frisbee, it reminded me of my Skippy. My friend for life or so I thought, until he contracted a deadly virus that took him from my life. No longer do I look at his bowls the same way as they still sit on the floor near the door.

This statement gives more specific details, without telling how I “felt”. You can read in my words that I miss him. You can read my hurt without using the word. You can read that I miss my dog and that I’m hurting just by getting the longing feeling from, “No longer do I look at his bowls the same way.”

The point of "showing" is not to drown the reader in a sea of details. Instead, you should pick out only those instrumental details that matter.

Give your reader something to hold onto. Have them frothing at the mouth waiting to read more of your pain and anguish. Give him/her a tale of beauty with ribbons of sensory and imagery. Save the telling for the hairdresser.

Give your writing some music and it will SING!