Words Is Hard

     "Mrs. Haidle, that's not proper English." Unfortunately, I heard that from one of my grammar-policing students during an elementary choir class.
     "This is why I am your music teacher and not your English teacher. Let's sing." Inside, I secretly cringed, knowing that I easily fumbled over my sentences and even kids knew it. Don't misunderstand, I'm not at the redneck level by any means. I can speak well enough you shouldn't imagine I'm toothless and in overalls. But I can scramble my grammar and occasionally use the completely wrong word. I have even noticed now that I'm well into my 40's, that I frequently forget an entire word in the middle of my sentence. I have found that writing can ease this struggle allowing me the luxury of editing thoughts and retyping them until they flow smoother. Or is it, until they flow more smoothly? Anyway...
     Grammarly, the app, was made for people like me. And for Moses. You know, Moses from the Bible. I'm quite certain he could have benefited from it as well. Remember how God wanted to send him back to Egypt to lead the Hebrews out of capitivity and to the promised land? Even while standing in the presence of God, talking with the Creator of the universe, he had a problem. In that moment the issue holding him back from leading God's people to freedom was his speech problem. "O Lord, I'm not very good with words. I never have been, and I'm not now, even though you have spoken to me. I get tongue-tied, and my words get tangled." (Exodus 4:10 NLT)

     Today, I am pondering Moses's quandary. Why? Because I dream of embarking into the world of writers and am wrestling with the fear that my words could be dubbed as "not proper English" and therefore, unusable. I'm not used to feeling uneasy. Partly because I have just finished two marathon chapters of my life, nearly 30 years in the making, both of which I felt talented and fully capable. The past 3 decades, I have lived at my piano, working as an accompanist. I am completely at ease on a concert stage in front of a thousand people. I thrive on being the invisible person on stage during a choir concert, knowing I have the best seat in the house. Also, more importantly, I have spent the last 25 years raising my family but I do not have little kids anymore. My husband, Daryl and I, have four wonderful, dynamic, grown adults who bring us such satisfying joy. They don't need me to mother them, do their laundry, or wipe their noses. Yahoo! I get to enjoy my children as friends now. These rewarding chapters are closing. A new chapter is waiting.
     If I could script this next chapter, I'd love for it to be titled "Candi Writes On Meaningful Matters" but to begin with, I'd be content with a chapter titled "Candi Writes And It Doesn't Completely Stink." Between raising kids, going to school events, teaching piano lessons, and accompanying for school choirs, I've been stashing my writing ideas and story outlines in notebooks and on scratch paper, onto computers and audio recordings, hoping to one day bring my ideas to life and share them with others.
     My love for writing started young. I discovered my hankering for words through school writing projects and the devotion I felt for my notorious junior high journal (which I still have but told my children they can have only after I die.) As a teenager, journaling was a favorite time-killer, perhaps because it gave me a place to spout my inner thoughts and write about my secret, ever changing crush. I think my brother especially appreciated that I began writing in my journal since he got tired of listening to me talk about my newest infatuations, whom he claimed always had the name, Brian. (Hey, there were a lot of Brians in school in those days!) Over the years, stacks of journals captured my prayers and hopes, frustrating days and special memories I didn't want to forget. Eventually, typing at a comptuer screen to an unknown, virtual world introduced me to my first awkward blog called CandiandCoffee. I began to realized how much I loved telling people about what God was doing in my life, and thus, I eventually started this blog, Free at Last. It's been my stopping spot when anything of great consequence has happened in my life, which is why I type today.
     I've dreamt of going beyond scratching ideas on paper in the middle of conversations. I've imagined what it'd be like to write with others in mind instead of writing mostly to myself. Time after time, I've shared my favorite writing quote by C. Day Lewis. He said, "We do not write in order to be understood; We write in order to understand." I believe this to be true. My life has made more sense as I've poured my thoughts onto paper. But now I've come, hoping to go a step beyond journaling and blogging. I am hoping to write stories for children and materials for mothers to use in  parenting. I have some school curriculum ideas to explore. And just maybe someday I can write a Christmas program. I can easily give myself a million reasons why I am inadequate to accomplish any of these tasks. For me, sometimes "words is hard". But I love words. I love stories! I know if I have anything worth sharing, I only need to remember it was God who created me with all these ideas and dreams for a reason. So with God, grammarly, spell-check, gallons of coffee and those few supersmart grammar-police individuals who can't help but speak up, this tongue-tied musician might have a fighting chance at becoming a writer!