I once was a writer...

The last nine months of my life have been filled with change. Unexpected change, unwanted change, forced change, so much change. For a girl who likes change in small doses in a controlled manner, it's been a learning process. During all of it, I'm trying to listen to God, for guidance and courage to do whatever it is He guides me to. I feel like I'm just stumbling my way through, blind, no idea where I am or where I'm going. I only know that I am in fact, going somewhere, to do...something. I ask Him what I'm supposed to do, then listen. If I'm not sure, I ask Him to be a little louder. Really, I ask Him to slap me upside the head just to make sure I don't miss it.

I was once called a writer. Long ago, that was my passion, my job. But life and the world changed and for years I just thought of that as something I once was, that girl I barely remember now, she used to do that writing thing. For a long time I missed it, like an addict needs a fix. But over time I learned to let it go. I considered myself lucky to have pursued a dream in my lifetime and accepted that it was just something from my past now. And then one day, I just completely forgot it.

Until one day when God tells me to start a blog. Just like that, out of nowhere, like a slap across the face "Start writing, Darian." I didn't know why then, still don't now even, but here we are. Writing. I keep going through this cancer life changing stuff, still listening for Him, still fumbling around. For a while there's been a whisper, a low, quiet voice calling me to write. Like, really write. I had been ignoring it, because it wasn't like it was when I was a writer, it wasn't a passion calling to me or an itched that needed to be scratched. I had given up on that long ago. But it kept calling, and I kept telling it to go away. I think because I was scared. I didn't know what to write, who I am as a writer now, how I would find time for that once my life is "normal" again. Something that I was once so passionate about now just terrifies me.

So there's that voice, telling me to write.

And I'm over here like "Shut up voice, I AM writing, I got a blog..." 
"WRITE, Darian," the voice says.
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, okay, whatever, like I have time for that. I don't even know what to write anyway."

I'm in the middle of reading a couple of books, the ones you can only read in smallish chunks because it requires a lot of self-evaluation. One of them, that I haven't actually gotten back to in a minute, is about learning to listen for and just say yes to God. When He calls, you say yes. Doesn't matter how scary or weird what He's asking you to do is, you just say yes and go all in with God. Mind you, this book I stumbled on in the midst of my ignoring the little voice I kept hearing....A few months go by, and by now I've gotten pretty good at ignoring it, because it scares me. Because it's more change, more of the unknown. I get so good at ignoring it that I sort of forget about it. And then just like, there it is again, loud and insistent "Write." Whoa, okay God, I'm listening, freaking out like a kid that just got into trouble, but I'm listening... and I get to praying. Because okay, sure, I'll write, but umm....write what, exactly?

Weeks go by, then, He simply tells me I already have what I need. In a blink the entire series I was working on ages ago is completely rewritten, all four books, playing before me like a movie from beginning to end. Within minutes I know everything already written (wherever it is anyway) is trash, and I know just how it all needs to go now. So here I am, in old familiar, terrifying territory, writing a book.

I once was a writer. A writer without purpose, without direction. But as I lay my fingers atop the keyboard, my old friend, I have purpose, I have direction. Once again, I am a writer....