Information overload! Ever been there? Your head feels like a full laundry basket after two-weeks — not one more square inch remains empty. Straggling shirt sleeves overflow the edges. Socks mash to the size of dollar bill. When the crammed basket is tipped over, jiggling and shaking is necessary. Onto the floor plops the heap like a formed jello mold. No dead air.
That’s my brain right now. Ideas, information, creativity, angles, perspectives, instruction, insight, and thoughts are racing through my mind like clothes in a spin cycle. I returned Sunday night from my four-day Writing for the Soul writer’s conference in
The conference overflowed with invaluable information, amazing speakers, applicable teaching, and editors. At the end of each 14-hour day, my mind whirled with new ideas.
It’s four days later now and I still haven’t digested all the information. I woke up the other morning with my first thought in mid-sentence of how I can tweak things, rearrange, and package my book. Clearly the laundry basket is overflowing!
Parenting is a bit like this for me as well. Just when I think I’ve got it down, the rules change. I rack my brain for a new angle or perspective, or get creative to find unconventional ways to teach our daughter the lesson.
When Hannah was just a toddler, I would try to sit her down and give her the talk of all the whys and why not’s. Of course, at that young age, her attention span waned quickly. Get it out quicker next time! Get to the point! Now that she’s entering the adolescent years, more creativity is needed given that hormones enter the scene to mess up any plan in seconds.
As parents, there are days that we feel like our minds have only dead air, fresh ideas dried up, and the rules spilled over. But somehow, somewhere, God’s gracious perspective enters the scene and the innovative angle appears like the sunny blue sky saying hello after a thunderstorm.
As a writer and parent, I need His perspective. I stumble in my approach, my slant spills out wrong, and my perspective needs a gentle twist.
Now if only God did laundry …
