Ladybugs

There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.

—1 Corinthians 12:5–6

I was good at working, good at the buzz and busyness of leading people and managing events and ideas. What made me good at it was my ability to hold so many things in my head, like a handful of ladybugs. And now my work, writing, is about letting all the bugs crawl away and being able to focus on a totally blank page, a totally empty hand.

I thought that my single tasks, caring for our baby and writing, both would make my world very small. What I have found is that they make my world impossibly big, that they open up something in my head and in my heart.

In my grandparents’ house when I was small, there were crystals hung on fishing line over the kitchen sink. When the sun came through the glass in the mornings, the whole kitchen was filled with bright wiggling rainbows of light, and we were mesmerized by the beauty and magic of it. That’s how it is now, like this tiny child and this blank screen have turned the living room into a wonderland, bouncing and brimming over unexpectedly with beauty and color and bands of light.