A Perfect Time to Let My Words Go

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it

Madeleine L’Engle

If that’s true, I have been wasting a lot of time as I wait to be inspired. It’s time to get to work. I guess I’ll start here.

I wrote that in July of 2012. For those who are well acquainted with my daughter, Kirsten, you may recognize the slightly-altered name of this blog. When she wanted to start a blog before she began her YWAM adventure (that’s Youth With a Mission, and she went to the YWAM base in Tijuana, Mexico) in 2017, she asked me what I thought she should call it. I suggested Zuzu’s Petals because I doubted I would ever get my blog off the ground. My first — unfinished & unpublished — post had been languishing on wordpress.com for five years at that point. So that’s what she used.

After George Bailey experienced what it would have been like for Bedford Falls if he’d never been born, he knew he was truly alive when he checked for Zuzu’s petals in his pocket. They helped to re-establish his purpose and meaning in the life of his family and his community. Zuzu’s petals has always served as shorthand for “what really matters” — or something close to it that I can’t quite put my finger on – to me.

Turns out Kirsten isn’t really blogging these days, and she was willing to return the name to me.

I’ve always been a writer. Sometimes for an audience, but mostly in personal journals. I’ve always aspired to start a blog, but at least two things stopped me: I didn’t know what I have to say that isn’t already being said more deftly by others with far more reach (and techy graphic skills) than me, and my penchant for perfection. I have been a member of a group called Hope*Writers for years without having truly engaged. Recently, a newer local group member reached out to me (thank you, Pam!) to connect for mutual support, which prompted me to ask myself what I’m waiting for. As the beginning of this post indicates, I’ve been aware FOR A LONG TIME that to think of myself as a writer, I need to write.

One of the outcomes of the Covid-19 Pandemic era (you knew that was going to make an appearance here) is that we are experiencing a universal cosmic pause. Without morbidly dwelling on it, I realize that the world — my life — may be forever altered in ways I can’t foresee now. It’s like we’ve all been forced to just sit down with the bucket of our life on the beach and examine what’s inside. We’re being given the opportunity to look through the collection of stones we’ve filled it with. That’s somehow freeing. Cathartic. I have time to examine just what it is that has occupied my life and what it is I WANT to occupy my time moving forward. And so do you.

I’d like to use this space to examine what’s important. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t do so perfectly. I may change things as I go along, as I learn how to use this site — that will be one of the ways we’ll know I’m making progress in my relationship with perfection. One of the elements of a Hope*Writers teaching that I found liberating was the realization that I need to get over the “scarcity” mindset — as though words are in short supply so I have to share them sparingly. I think what contributes to that notion, for me, again, is my desire that any words I put out there be perfect. That every paragraph be beautifully crafted, skillfully layered upon the one before it, and that the flawless finished product be assembled like an exquisite wedding cake with fondant icing. It’s not going to create some kind of cyber imbalance if the words I share aren’t arranged and presented in practically perfect Mary Poppins manner. As Emily Freeman (one of the founders of Hope*Writers) shared, we live in a world of abundance in terms of words; I can just let my words go.

So here they go.