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C.S. Lewis
10/052020

What Would You Have Me Do?

Inspiration by

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” C. S. Lewis

As Al Borland used to say on the first Tim Allen show, Home Improvement, “I don’t think so, Tim.” Usually, when Tim was about to blow something up that shouldn’t blow up.

But I digress. Many times, I’ve met someone who has retired, and they sit like a gnome in the garden, gathering dirt and bugs and mold. They’re not thrilled, but don’t seem to have a clue what to do about it.

That isn’t what God wants for us. Yes, we’ve worked hard all our lives and we’ve earned the reward of being able to sit back and take it easy. For many of us, however, the reward seems fragile because our financial resources don’t allow us to live as we dreamed. But that’s for another blog.

Taking it easy doesn’t have to mean we turn into a vegetable, like a couch potato. We still have so much to give to our family, our church, our community.

We can still set new goals or dream new dreams. For example, I retired from my first job in 1999 and immediately set out for my next dream, working for a Christian ministry. That happened in early 2000 and lasted until 2010. While I was doing this, I was also writing. Writing became my third full-time career in 2010.

But God isn’t through with me. In the early 2010s, he birthed a new dream. He led my wife and me to a new church and the opportunity to serve in the stewardship ministry. The ideal part of this dream is it’s as a volunteer. Which means I’m not dependent on it for a paycheck or a livelihood. I serve because I want to serve.

Recently, I met a man who wanted to know what retirement was like. I told him retirement is whatever you want it to be. You can do nothing, or you can do something. It’s your choice.

Recently, I’ve felt my body changing. It’s not as spry as it used to be. It gets aches and pains it didn’t use to get. My stamina isn’t what it used to be.

Do you get these sensations sometimes?

I said to my wife, “I’m not old enough to be experiencing this junk. Old people feel like this.” Then I looked in the mirror and my reflection said, “You are old. Get used to it and adapt to the new you.” Inside a still small voice said, “I still have things for you to do for the Kingdom. So get over it!”

But that doesn’t mean I have to stop dreaming dreams or setting goals. As long as I have breath in my body, God can use me. He can plant new desires in my heart and provide the means to achieve them.

I can be a writer, a stewardship volunteer, a better husband and father, a friend, a neighbor. I can be what I dream to be, and I can achieve goals because I have my focus on my future and my God.

Take some time this week. Meditate on this quote from C. S. Lewis and ask God, “Lord, what would you have me do?”

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Cottom
11/112019

Never Too Late

Craft of Writing, Inspiration , 5 by

I remember the day I heard Geena Davis, the actress, was vying for a semi-finals spot in archery for the 2000 Olympics. She was 43 years old, and her introduction to archery had only begun two years before this Olympic tryout. The news filled me with a warm, elated feeling, close to giddiness, that I didn’t quite understand. I was pulled in and invested in her success. Yes, I was rooting for the underdog, but it was more than that. Deep down, what was actually bubbling to the surface inside of me was this: I could still become an Olympian.

Sometimes it feels like life has slipped us by. We intended to do exciting things, and be great at such-and-such, but somehow we got caught up and lost in the day-to-day.

For me, I wanted to be a writer. I have always wanted to be a writer. When I was six years old, I wrote my first poem and started a journal of my writing collections. At eight, my third grade teacher told me I was a good writer, and that sealed the deal.  I wanted to be a writer when I grew up.

What I actually became was an English professor and a mother.

I put my writing on the back-burner of my life. It sat there boiling, the most fantastic homemade soup, ready for me to pick it up off the stove. Sometimes I’d stir it, or stick a spoon in, and taste a bit. It was not quite ready. When the timer started going off, I was too busy. I settled on convenience and ate fast food instead.

Toby Mac, the musician, puts it this way: “Too many passing dreams…roll by like limousines.” I’ve definitely felt like I’ve stood on the sidewalk and watched plenty of stretch limos roll by.

One of those times was when my husband had a chance meeting with Matt Hader, a screenwriter and uncle to Bill Hader of Saturday Night Live.  My husband told him I was an aspiring screenwriter, and Mr. Hader gave him his business card. He said he’d help me if I ever got a script written. He said to write every day. That was five years ago. I watched that limousine roll by.  But I still have his card.  Maybe I can grab an Uber car and find a way to catch up with it.

Not that everything I had prioritized above my writing wasn’t important.  It was. I loved my students, and know I made an impact investing in their lives.  My love for my children and my family surpasses it all.  I don’t regret the time I have given, immersing myself in taking care of them. What I regret is not having carved out at least a little time doing the thing that thrills me…writing.  The good news is, it’s never too late.

Once, at a Barnes and Noble bookstore, I read George Eliot’s quote on a bookmark. “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” Never had a quote resonated with me more.  I bought the bookmark, but kept the words deep down in my heart.  I knew I would eventually make that move to become a writer. I would become what I had never been.

Last year, the younger of my two daughters moved off to college. I still had an eight year old son at home, but I saw this as an opportunity to fill the aching void of my girls not being home. I began my writing journey. I went to my first writer’s workshop the month my daughter moved out. It was my first step.

After three days of soaking in every ounce of information about writing I could, a dam broke and a poem poured out of me.   It took me a month to shape and polish it, then I sent it off.

It. Got. Published. At the age of 50, I had become a writer.

So here I am, doing it. I wrote a short story after that, and was asked to do a guest blog for Write Well, Sell Well.  Here’s the thing.  It’s not too late for you, either.

My childhood friend, Blake, decided he wanted to move to Colorado and pursue his lifelong dream of being part of the ski patrol.  He trained for two years, and a month after he turned 50, he became part of the Keystone Ski Patrol rookie class.  When I saw the picture of him and all those other 20-something rookies, I felt that same warm, fuzzy feeling.  He was living his dream on the slopes.

My friend, Shannon, went through a divorce and set a goal to do two things she had never done, but always wanted to do.  Lose weight. Go to church.  She did both.

I know a teacher who was totally drained after 10 years of overcrowded classrooms, subpar supplies, and too little pay. When a statewide teacher walk out ended less than successfully, in his opinion, he and his wife quit their jobs. They bought an RV and spent a year traveling the U.S. before settling into a new job in a new state.  It’s not too late to start over.

As impressive as Geena Davis’s middle-age launch into the realm of Olympic archery was, there have been even older Olympians.  In the Running Deer Shooting category, Oscar Swahn became the oldest silver medalist at the age of 72.  Seventy-two!

Perhaps you’ve read about Johanna Quaas. She started competing in gymnastics in 1935, and has never stopped.  In 2012, she became a viral sensation for her gymnastic training videos and was entered into the Guinness Book of World records as the oldest gymnast at the age of 77. You’re never too old.

You can live your dreams. You can change your career. You can lose the weight. You can begin a new hobby. You can break the addiction. You can even change your unpleasant disposition to a cheery one. You, my friend, can become an Olympian.

Has your dream been on the back-burner a while? Don’t let that stop you. It turns out, time may have been just what you needed. Long-simmering soup can actually be the best soup of all.  With time, ingredients interweave and meld into one another, creating something even more flavorful.

Now is your moment.  The soup is ready. This is the day to finally take that dream off the stove.  It’s going to be delicious!

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Never too old to write
10/212019

We’re Never Too Old to Write

Inspiration by

The people of Write Well, Sell Well are brilliant. Many of them have inspired and helped me in my writing career from its infancy more than 20 years ago through today.

But they may have had a brain cramp.

You see, they invited me to write a periodic column for their blog. They asked me to focus on what it’s like to be an older writer. I’ll be 72 in January.

So this is the first—and maybe the last—of what I’m calling the Old Fart Column.  Or: keep moving and don’t look back. They may be gaining on you.

I hope you’ll find encouragement and inspiration from my words. And maybe some humor of the warped variety. Who knows what God has in mind?

My writing career began in my forties when I had this brilliant idea that I could write a novel. I’ve been a reader all my life. I think I was born reading a Batman comic book. I remember thinking, how hard could writing be? You just put one word after another, right?

So I dabbled, as I call it, for about 10 years. I rewrote the first chapter probably 15 times.

Then I got serious. I attended conferences. Read books and magazines on the craft. Joined writers groups. Signed up for the Christian Writers Guild online courses.

I made the time to learn the craft and to practice, practice, practice. Which is another word for revise, revise, revise.

I entered my novel in a contest. This time with an entirely different first chapter. And I won the contest! And my first novel was published when I was 63 years old.

I don’t share this to brag on myself. All I did was type words. God gave the inspiration and the ideas.

I share it to encourage those of you with graying hair and cranky bodies to continue to pursue your writing dreams. And turn the care of it over to God.

I recently attended WriterCon 2019 in Oklahoma City. I was amazed to see a great number of the attendees were my age or older. Many have been writing for years and are still seeking to publish their first book.

Don’t ignore small beginnings. Many writers started in some other forum before they looked to write a book. Some wrote church curriculum, some were journalists, others wrote short stories or poetry. Magazine articles and church newsletters were the route many took. Some, like me, jumped directly into writing novels because that was the burning desire in our hearts.

Here are some examples of when some authors published their first book.

  • Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65.
  • Frank McCourt was 66 when he published his first book: Angela’s Ashes. And it won the Pulitzer Prize.
  • Harriet Doerr published Stones of Ibarra when she was 54 and it won the National Book Award.
  • Millard Kaufman, the creator of Mr. Magoo, didn’t publish his first novel, Bowl of Cherries, until he was 90.
  • British author Mary Wesley published her first children’s book when she was 57 and her first adult novel when she was 71.

So don’t let the date on your driver’s license frighten you. Ignore the gray-haired face in the mirror and the joints that aren’t as supple as they once were. Ignore the voices in your head that tell you you’re too old to start something new, especially to write.

And sometimes these voices are outside your head in the guise of well-meaning friends and family. Ignore them too. And remind them that if they aren’t nice to you, you’ll put them in your book. And not necessarily in a good way.

As Anne Lamott is quoted as saying, “If my family didn’t want me to write about them, they should have been nicer to me.”

If you want to write, write. Learn the craft. Join writers groups. Attend conferences. Find a mentor.

At our ages, we have a wealth of stories to tell. Stories that will teach, enlighten, encourage, and entertain. Stories that will inspire and bring people closer to God and to what they are called to be. We’ll be sharing wisdom and insight that can impact so many. The world needs to hear our stories. It needs to hear your stories.

Let me close with this. Before my first novel was published, I asked a few friends and fellow writers to read the manuscript and give me feedback to help me make the story better.

One reader pointed out one scene and said, “Whatever you do, don’t take this out of the book. It brought me closer to God.”

And in my heart I heard God. “If your book never gets published, it still achieved my purpose. It brought her closer to me.”

Keep writing.

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