When I blog...

Sometimes inspiration hits me in the middle of the night.  Or while doing dishes.  Or taking a shower.  Most of the time, I'm writing in my head.  I can be watching a movie and have a storyline of my own going about something completely unrelated.  Probably 80% of the writing I do never sees the light of day.  I have a book idea I've had percolating for the last 8+ years.  I can be vacuuming and have words string together and I think, "I have to get this down."  So I turn off the vacuum and run to the computer or grab a notebook and start writing.  One sentence births the next and before I know it, I hear Miss A waking from her nap and realize an hour has passed and the vacuuming/load of clothes/dishwasher never got finished.

Today is not one of those days.  Today is a day when my head is still in a fog, fighting a case of strep throat and feeling the effects of too many days sleeping on the sofa, too many hours watching bad TV intended for 70-year olds (based on the plethora of commercials for denture cream and fiber supplements). Today is the day when I have started and erased at least five different blog posts about five different subjects and the screen seems to taunt me, the keys uncooperative to form the words dancing in my head. It's days like this when I have to give myself a dose of grace.  It's days like this when I remember that I'm not a professional writer with a deadline and a contract.  It's days like this that I remind myself that my goal for this blog never has been perfection, but to leave a legacy for my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I would love to be able to pick up the diary of my great-grandmother Nana and read her thoughts when my great-uncle and my grandmother were babies.  What did she think about?  What did she worry about?  How did she cope with the stress of running and maintaining a home without all the tools we have to make it easy?  What made her smile?  How did she cope with the losses of not one, but three husbands?  I had 24 years with that beautiful woman and I never thought to ask her those questions.  I would give anything to have just an hour to know her heart more.  It inspires in me the need to document some of those answers from my own grandparents.  A living biography may be the greatest gift I can offer to my own children, a history of where they have come from and the road of faith that has preceded them.  Maybe my Christmas projects aren't complete after all.