The Car Ride That Changed Everything: #FBF

Just in case you thought I was making this up – Anne Lamott and me hanging out in Decatur.

“Oh but you must take it off the shelf,” urged the voice behind me in the low, crisp voice I had only ever heard on NPR. “There’s someone waiting to read it.”

She wasn’t talking directly to me, but I heard her. I, who was too scared to even open my mouth. Too scared to share my secret ambitions with the one person who made me feel like I had a voice in the first place. I was silenced in awe, but my mentor who was driving the car spoke the words I wished I could say.

“I have a book I’ve always been meaning to write, but with all the chaos of church life, I’ve had to put it back on the shelf.”

Those words barely left Julie’s lips before the voice from the back of the car piped up in admonition, bearing the pain of words unwritten. The women sitting behind me whose dreadlocks were edging their way into my periphery, spoke with the urgency of a life that didn’t really live until she started to write. And of an audience who never knew how to express themselves until they read her words.

The book that taught me I have a voice. If you haven’t read it – you need to.

I’ve spent two years ruminating over that car ride with Anne Lamott. Two years trying to silence the dry, desperate voice poking and prodding at my soul, demanding that it’s time I take the book off the shelf; reminding me over and over that there is someone waiting for me to speak the words I’ve been keeping bottled up inside.

“There’s never going to be a good time,” she said. “There’s always going to be something that wants to get in the way. You just have to suck it up and do it.”

Without ever talking back, I went on to spend the next two years saying, “But… but… but…” And, a couple months ago, I decided that “but” wasn’t good enough. There’s always going to be something that wants to get in the way. There’s always going to be a “but.”

So, today is the day I stop saying, “but.” Today is the day that I listen to this wise woman who showed me my voice in the first place. Today is the day I take the pages off the shelf and try to make something of them.

Jimmy Fallon says, “This blog is so not ew!”

I know this journey isn’t going to be pretty. I know the words aren’t always going to flow like milk and honey even though I thought riding in a car with Anne Lamott was pretty much like entering the promised land. And, I know there are going to be days when I’d rather watch Jimmy Fallon make a fool out of himself than risk embarrassment because the thoughts I have to share are inadequate and messy.

I know all this, but the words are waiting, and I’ve got to get them out. And the only way that’s going to happen is to just suck it up and do it.

So, here I am, friends. Rev. on the Edge. A young, single, female minister and writer living in the south. This isn’t the book. That will come. Maybe when I’m 40. This is just me taking my voice off the shelf where it’s been collecting dust and hoping that it lands on ears that need to hear.