Things aren’t what they seem…

If you had peeped into my bedroom this morning at 8, you would have thought – look at that lazy thing, tucked up under the duvet doing nothing. You would have, in fact, been dead wrong. Oh yes - to a casual observer it would seem that I was lying very snug and still, but what you would never have guessed is that my mind was rolling Chapter 6 around, figuring out the best way forward for my characters.

I’ve realized my eldest kiddo employs the same strategy in the mornings before school. She’ll eat breakfast, then have a five minute lie-in under the duvet. This used to drive me insane. I’d resist the urge - oh alright, I didn’t really try – to yell at her to get moving you’re going to be late! Then one morning, the lights went on. She began rolling her eyes up, the way she does when she’s thinking, quietly counting on her fingers… I listened really carefully. She was not singing the latest Adele song, she was in fact going through what waited for her that day. She was planning – not dozing. Outside? Dozing. Inside? Planning!  Wow.

Turns out whoever said that you can’t judge a book by its cover, was telling truth.

This got me thinking. What about life? Has your life ever looked like someone took a giant blender through the middle of it and laughed at the chaos? I know mine has. If you look on the surface, there is every reason to stop the train and demand a refund. But! In those times of trouble, you have no idea what is being established inside of you through the very things you would choose to avoid.

I have a sneaky feeling that if we choose to live by what we see with our eyes, if we let the externals dictate to us – we’ll live lives that fall far short of what we’ve been created for…

Goosies and salty tears

My heart has a way of recognising truth long before my mind catches up. When truth hits home inside of me, two things happen – I get goosebumps all down my arms and I find myself blubbing like a baby. Without fail. Every time.

As a writer, I get excited when I go goosies. Simply because I know that what moves me – will touch my readers. Maybe not all of them, but thats okay. Us creative types are ‘moved, to move’. Rory Noland describes this dynamic beautifully in his book The Heart of the Artist. To paraphrase… when you watch a movie, hear music or see a painting that makes you want to weep – its because the artist felt deeply about what he was creating.

I felt this when I read Jim Zee’s post Two Heartbeats Wanted – Apply Within. I caught a glimpse of the heart of the man – the things that matter to him and reading it moved me.

I heard a song yesterday that had me undone for most of the day. Why? Because Matt caught the heart of the Father and sang it over me. Over you. Over a broken, hurting world. I’ll leave you with the song…

Inspired by a cornflake?

 My nearly-12 year old has an artistic streak. I never realised how deep it ran till the day she took an hour to eat a bowl of cornflakes. Instead of yelling, “Hurry UP!” (my default response to anything slower than full tilt), I watched her for a while. She would dip her spoon into the bowl, come up cornflake-less and study the spoon. Tucking the “Hurry UP!” behind my left ear to whip out later, I asked her what she was doing. Her reply? “Look at the pretty patterns the milk makes on my spoon.” Ok-aay…

I was about to berate her father for adding oddness to the gene-pool, when I remembered some things I’ve been inspired by…

Sparkling rain-droplets on the inside of our tent flap while camping over new year… So beautiful. The fact that stuff was getting wet inside didn’t detract from my fascination… It speaks to me of liquid jewels or tiny people who live upside down.  Could be the fabric of a prom dress – or the dazzling surface of a brand new planet. Maybe each droplet has an entire world contained inside? The texture of an alien’s skin – or a creature that lives deep in inky blackness under forgotten mountains.

This oddness is not limited to myself and my eldest. We came home from school one day to find our gardener had put a stone straight through our glass sliding door. Being safety glass, it had shattered – but not collapsed. Did we erupt in anger at his carelessness? No. Did we run to phone to get the glass people out to replace it so we weren’t housebound? Not even close.

Three of us fought over the camera to see who could capture this stunning spectacle most satisfactorily.  Oooo – the things that this spoke to me of… the shattered barrier between this world and the next when someone dies. The way that being broken inside by trauma or abuse distorts how you perceive your life and your self. Each time the wind blew, some more chips fell free – how fragile the broken soul.

There truly is inspiration all around for those who’ve trained their eyes to see and ears to hear.

Here’s wishing you a day so brimful of inspiration that it feels as if your brain might explode through your eardrums and come squirting out your nostrils!