Empty by Sharon Heagy

 

Empty. That’s the way my head feels at the moment. Void of thought like my brain has packed its bag and moved to a better climate. One where ideas flow like waterfalls tumbling over rocks. They come so fast that they are nothing but a turbulent mess, but oh what a frenzy in which to be enfolded. What a glorious problem to have - too many ideas.  I visualize my brain lounging in a deck chair, cold drink and a long straw, maybe one of those little bamboo umbrellas and a slice of pineapple. “Ahhh” it sighs, basking in the glow of ideas. (Secretly I hope it gets brain freeze from the icy beverage. Desert me will ya.) 

 

But right now, I am staring at the screen and even the cursor has quit flashing, bored from lack of activity. In the silence every sound seems magnified. The wind sounds like it wants to reach through the crack of the window and tousle my hair and play with the papers on my desk, throwing them up in a whirlwind like the dry leaves of fall. It would exit the way it came in, laughing like a child full of joy, leaving me rumpled, glasses and hair askew but with a slight grin as its joy infects me too. 

 

I hear the planes from the training base in Moose Jaw flying overhead. Many times, I run outside and wave like crazy and often they respond in their next pass, tipping their wings as they go by. Probably having a laugh at the crazy old lady on her front lawn flailing her arms around. I call them ‘my boys’. “My boys are out today!” I yell to my husband as I vanish out the front door, hoping not to miss them. 

 

There is a cat padding by and a huff from our horse of a dog as he changes position in the middle of his afternoon nap. Two clocks compete for the loudest ticking sound. They are in time with each other, albeit on opposite beats musically. 

 

Not every day of writing flows. Sometimes it’s a bit jerky, a word here, a thought there. Oft times they are random and disjointed, but it’s important to keep going, to do the work. Like Watty Piper’s train in “The Little Engine That Could” – ‘I think I can, I think I can.’ And you can, and you will, if you just persevere. That’s what I tell myself and believe it. Or at least try to believe it. Oh, Lord, squash my unbelief.

 

But I think I need to go now and ask the Lord to help me find my brain so that the echo in my head ceases. And I know He will because He is faithful and has helped me find so many lost things. He excels with the lost. If I am honest with myself, it is He who has given me these words so that I wouldn’t have to submit a blank screen. And if I wait patiently and keep writing, words will flow once again as He provides them.

 

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me.”

Micah 7:7