Today, as I was spending time with the Lord, I heard Him tell me that I was like a mixed metaphor. At first, I thought it was silly of the Lord to tell me this using a simile, but then the severity of what He told me set in. Mixed metaphors can be funny, but are usually unacceptable form, and I really did not like the idea of being like something unacceptable.
So, I asked Him how exactly I was like a mixed metaphor, and He promptly expounded upon my double mindedness, a condition which results in my ongoing internal conflict. Often a mixed metaphor will result in conflicting comparisons, or transform what is being communicated into something completely different from the intended message.
Still not quite sure about why I was like a mixed metaphor, I asked the Lord to give me examples, and immediately He replied, “Your writing.” The sensation of having been punched in the gut was confirmation enough that He had hit me where I was vulnerable. He recalled how I had set out intent on writing about Him, plunging myself into His endless mystery, and as I state in my blog’s byline, to comment on the “search for a life of realizing the impossible.”
Up until recently, I wrote when I had topics I felt were important enough to write about, which were few and far between. I had a real job, with a real paycheck, and little time to really take writing to another level. After I lost my last job, I felt like it was the perfect opportunity to seek out a way to marry my passion and my career. It took some counsel from my wife and friends, but I finally settled on marrying my passion for God and writing as my course of action, and I would pick up some odd jobs here and there to help pay the bills until writing officially became profitable.
As I look back, I realize that the Lord correctly assessed my time spent on “seeking Him.” Unless He looks like an endless variety of underpaying freelance writing gigs, I have missed the mark. He reminded me this morning citing Matthew 6:33. I have been banging away at keys trying unsuccessfully to make words work well together, and forgetting why I wanted to even write in the first place. I want to record and communicate the discoveries I make about Him, not to sit at a computer all day in order to pound out contrived ramblings that may or may not be interesting to other people.
I feel like Ray Kinsella in Field of Dreams staring at a vision of a baseball field in the middle of his corn crop. Ray knows he has to build it, that it is the key to the mystery of his purpose, but faces foreclosure if he builds it and can't pay the mortgage on the farm. In the end, following his vision not only unlocks his dreams and heals his relationship with his father, but ends up saving the farm.
So, I will be reassessing how I am approaching this whole writing business. I don't know how God fits all the pieces together, but He will. All I have to do is make sure that I am keeping in step with His heartbeat, and not the thunderous cadence of the ho-hum drum.
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