I’m sitting here at my kitchen table, my laptop propped right next to the sippie cups and the bowl of crusty ramen noodles and bits of leftovers from lunch. My kitchen floor is atrocious. There’s some hot dog scraps and some paper scraps and some plastic dishes and although I’d like to clean this place up, I’m taking some time to scratch out words instead. It’s funny how, being in the middle of all the mess, I do feel right at home.

I’ve been processing a lot of things. I’ve learned to take a few days off of social media here and there partly because I’m on there a lot and I don’t like how it feels–that dependency. And also because I post a lot and I worry that I become annoying to folks and so I like to practice a little solitude and silence so as not to talk too much.

I also take social media breaks because I love thinking and rethinking and praying and planning how I actually want to live this life. Like, the best way to live it. It’s like a treasure hunt–I’ve got this innate eagerness to figure it all out, though I wonder if anyone ever does figure it out. Or if mostly we just stumble along until we come to the end and find out that figuring it out wasn’t the most important thing. But that walking with our Maker down life’s trails with all it’s twists and turns was the main thing.

Earlier this week, I experienced a night of complete insomnia. Meaning, I was dead tired and I couldn’t fall asleep till 5 in the morning. And the next night, it nearly happened again, but I had gotten up and sat in the bathroom with the light on and prayed and read my Bible until peace came.

I think God showed me why I couldn’t go to sleep. Now, I don’t know this for sure, but I’m learning to just have faith that God does talk to us in the quietness of our hearts, and that we can actually hear Him–we just have to trust and not over think stuff and rationalize it all away. Because our logical brains are really good at reasoning God away.

Anyways, I think God shared with me that the reason why I couldn’t sleep is because I’ve been striving for a while now in a certain area. See, slowly but surely, in the last couple years, I’ve come to realize that I’m a writer. I believe writing is a gift from God and it’s not a gift to make me great or famous, it’s a gift to point folks back to God. And so I’ve been making writing an actual habit–a daily part of my life. But, here’s the thing. I had lost sight of why I was writing.

Every day I’d sit down and I felt this compulsion to produce something. You know because writers write books and they’ve got constant helpful content up on their blogs and they produce work, and a good writer does this well and all the time and they just keep making more and more. Well, I know what you’re thinking–you’re thinking this is a bad way of thinking. But, I couldn’t see it just yet.

Not until I lost a full night of sleep.

And so as I read God’s Words and spent time with Him and listened to His Spirit, I think He was telling me some things. Things like, “Maggie, I made you to be a writer, yes, but mostly I made you to be free! You’re free!”

I needed to hear that from my Maker.

So, I’m starting over again. Kind of. As best as I can at least. Though, I don’t have it all figured out yet. I want to write still, yes, and I hope it will turn into books, yes, because that’s my favorite, but I don’t have to put pressure on myself to always be producing. And I think it’s okay to have a plan and to make it a part of my daily life, but generating a bunch of content, perhaps that’s not the main thing.

Maybe spilling things out and stumbling along and just doing this writing thing with the One who tucked it down into my chest to begin with– maybe that’s the main thing.

So, here’s to all the writers who just want to write from the purest of motives. Let’s relax and enjoy the process, okay?  For the love of God. And for the love of writing.