One Late Bloomer Finds Her Season by Brenda Leyland

“Everything on earth has its own time and its own season.”

ECCLESIASTES 3:1

I must tell you about the bright yellow rudbeckia flowers, familiarly known as black-eyed-susans, that grow in my garden every summer. This perennial plant pokes its green shoots through sun-warmed soil early in spring, but unlike tulips or daffodils, who waste no time sending out their flower buds, the rudbeckia unhurriedly spends spring and summer developing sturdy stems and masses of glossy leaves, with nary a blossom in sight. Then in early August -- when peonies, lilacs and Siberian irises are history -- the rudbeckia takes centre stage and bursts into flamboyant blossom and continues to bloom until the frost comes.

Like my Rudbeckia, I am a late-in-the-season bloomer. Many of my friends and classmates after high school and college sprinted out of life's starting gate and got on with their lives -- finding mates, getting married, having kids, being homemakers, starting careers. It was my most cherished dream too, but I was in my forties before I met the wonderful man I would marry. And I was well past the fresh flush of youth before I ever dreamed of writing or attending my first writers' event. Beginning to recognize I was forever composing sentences and opening paragraphs in my mind, I finally started writing them down on paper.

“You don’t have to remind a flower
when its time to bloom is near;
it has been preparing for it all of its life.”
MATSHONA DHLIWAYO

Some people know they want to write from young and so they prepare as they grow. For me, because the desire dawned much later, God knew I needed time to acclimatize to the idea, and so my season of preparation matured gently through the summer of my life. I explored writing genres, developed writing skills, took classes, wrote articles, created newsletters, and started blogging. It all became part of figuring out what was in my heart to share with others.

Then came my sixtieth birthday. Although astonished to have arrived at this decade so soon, I did not find myself lamenting my youth long spent. Rather, I embraced turning sixty in a way that completely surprised me. It felt as if I'd been waiting for this season all my life, and I reached out to receive it like a gift. The time had come. In floral lingo, it was my season to bloom.

From this vantage point, I looked back and saw two things I'd never seen before. One, because I preferred writing non-fiction and mostly from my own material, I saw that I had had to live my longish life before I was ready to write about it. Second, I needed the time and distance to see how God’s faithfulness, loving guidance, and grace had umbrella-ed everything that had ever happened to me. I could see that even my day job in the Alberta Legislature for more than twenty years had been part of the preparation, developing the writing skills I needed on the job that would prove useful down the road.

One phrase overshadowed my thoughts during that milestone birthday. "Gather the memories." I began curating my personal history, organizing the motley collection of photos, journals, yearbooks, scrapbooks, and various touchstone keepsakes. As long forgotten memories floated up, I wrote them down. I created an autobiographical timeline as a reference which included recording many of the beautiful, life-changing God moments I had experienced over the years. And that Fall, I self-published a magazine through Blurb that housed my simple but cherished childhood Christmas memories. Talk about being totally amazed when strangers wrote to say they loved the stories and please would I publish more. Music to any writer's ears.

As a girl, I watched my farming parents working into the late hours when the days were ripe to harvest grain and garden provender. Less needful things had to be set aside. There was no time to lose. The frost was coming. That's how I feel about the season I'm in. There is an increasing sense of urgency. I'm not getting any younger and the days do fly by. Other authors reach sixty and already have a legacy of writings to their credit, but much of my work still lies ahead. I embrace being a writer in this late summer-early autumn season of my life. Filled with gratitude and joy, my heart sings and I do feel His pleasure when I write.

Oh Lord, keep me near to your heart, let these words be written with Love. Quicken my body and sharpen my mind. Take these 'breathings of my heart' to bless others, in this generation and maybe even in future ones.

A long-time InScribe member, Brenda Leyland writes from her home in Alberta, Canada. She has been a columnist and contributor in the FellowScript magazine. She sees herself as a curator of memories and works away at various memoir projects. Inspired by beauty, Brenda also blogs at It's A Beautiful Life and posts on Facebook.

Writing and (Other Areas of) Life: A Balancing Act by Sandi Somers

Our lives are often busy with many responsibilities that can interrupt our writing life. “Maybe life IS the interruptions,” wrote Janice Dick in her blog. “Maybe my writing is the commentary I fit in as often as I can. I call it my vocation, my career, my job. But it will always be a balancing act with what happens off the page.”   (Read her blog here.)

 Our writers this month explore what balancing life on and off the page means to them. How do they balance the two? What insights will they share with you, our readers?

"To everything there is a season. "

This spring I had a lot of yard work to do. My fence needed painting, my flower beds needed redesigning and my shrubs needed trimming. I had to catch up from a couple years of benign neglect. My writing, it's true, got behind. But while painting, planting and trimming, I thought a lot about this month’s topic and how writing is a commentary on life.

Each season brings a different phase of life. Like the different seasons, different activities come and go. It’s true that in summer I’m usually busier with family—and yes, with yard work. The outdoors calls me to go bird watching, and right now, to go pick saskatoons with a friend. And therefore summer is a time when I don't have time for too much writing. However, in winter I’m more indoors. When the wind howls, the snow falls and the temperature plunges, I feel like I’m in a cocoon, curling up with my writing for most of each morning.  During this time I normally accomplish the bulk of my year’s writing. 

Life is holistic. Writing and the other areas of my life are not mutually exclusive. Writing is one part of life, along with relationships, responsibilities, relaxation and more. And all parts are integral, adding richness to life. I also find that experiences and responsibilities and people add a deeper understanding of God and how He works, and this understanding adds depth to my writing.

Writing is fed from ongoing life. I’ve found that the richer my ongoing life, the richer my writing will be, as it draws from deep resources the way a tree draws refreshment from deep within its roots. I well remember an interview I heard with Wayson Choy, a Chinese Canadian writer, who said that he gets to live his experiences twice: once in real time, and a second time as he relives those experiences in writing.

Each season brings its own adventure, and I focus on the positive as much as possible, rather than the limitations. To illustrate this concept, I think of my friends who live on Vancouver Island: each trip off the island means scheduling a ferry ride—that part of life is bound up by the ferry schedule that can sometimes be a burden. Whereas as a tourist I find that the ferry trip is part of the adventure of travelling to the island.

Each season is a time to appreciate God’s goodness. I look at Ecclesiastes 3 where the writer says that there is a time for everything. And then in a beautiful poetic style, he contrasts the different seasons of life. He concludes with, “(God) has made everything beautiful in it time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

God has made beautiful what happens both on and off the page.