I spoke at a conference last month and, you know, it was just okay. Maybe it was the year and a half of all my thoughts living somewhere between my mind and a notebook. Maybe it was the fact that my writing buddy was a newborn. Maybe it was crippling self-doubt. Probably it was all of the above.
In the week leading up to the conference, I drafted several emails in my head that essentially said “Due to unforeseen circumstances, I will not be able to speak this weekend or ever again because I have nothing to say.” Everyone in my house had a cold and I secretly prayed it would come for me and that I’d be too sick to go. I also prayed that the conference would get cancelled and considered sending an email just to confirm that it was still happening. I rewrote my talk three times. I paced my bedroom floor stumbling through a talk that just was not coming together, ripping notecards, sighing, collapsing dramatically face down on the duvet. I pulled all my favorite books off the shelves, tore through them hoping maybe a talk might fall out, fully formed on the back of a scrap paper bookmark. When it didn’t, I left the books in piles all over the house.
I like speaking because I love storytelling. I love weaving together themes and ideas. I love the challenge and I love what the work of writing and speaking produce in me. I love that moment when I write or say something that turns on a light for someone else, when they hear something they’ve heard a hundred times before but for some reason this time it really clicks into place. I love the way this work calls me to pay attention to my own life. I love seeing my work bear fruit.
The night before the conference, I let it all go. I put away the books and the notecards, got out my red Dutch oven and made soup with Lucy. We chopped and measured and rinsed. We watched onions and garlic, lentils and spices and broth become something more than the sum of their parts. The soup was okay. I really liked it, but Jeff and Lucy weren’t crazy about it and no one left the table raving about my culinary genius. The best part of the meal was without a doubt the naan bread I pulled out of the freezer, toasted for a couple minutes and brushed butter until it was dripping. In short, the best part of the meal was the part I didn’t make.
The next day, some of the speakers were gathered together after our talks and Heather, one of the keynote speakers, asked me how I was feeling about my talk. I really like Heather. I respect her and I’d like to learn from her. So naturally, I was tempted to make it sound like it went better than it did. I wanted to impress her. Instead, I told her the truth. That I had a lot to say and no flow. That it was just okay.
She told me “Sometimes we just scatter seeds and see what God waters.”
I’m not great at speaking, not yet. Sometimes I move too fast, my words keeping time with my racing heart. Sometimes I lose the plot half way through, forget what I’m talking about or why I’m there. Sometimes I make a joke that doesn’t land or stumble over my words. I repeat myself. I’m not great at speaking, but I want to be.
I am fairly confident that no one left my session thinking it was the most profound, most transformative talk they’d ever heard. I didn’t impress them with my vast knowledge, didn’t leave them speechless with stories of great bravery or perseverance or transformation. I gave them what I had: a few anecdotes, a handful of quotes, some ideas, a prayer.
Father Greg Boyle said “If you surrender your need for results and outcomes, success becomes God’s business. I find it hard enough to just be faithful.”
In order to scatter the seeds, I first have to unclench my fists and open my palms, the ultimate posture of surrender.
I’m starting to wonder what would happen if I stopped using so much of my precious energy trying to look like I know what I’m doing, pretending to be an expert when I’m actually a beginner. Not just a beginner at speaking, either. A beginner at marriage, at motherhood, at writing and faith, at living this wonderful, mundane, terrible life. Maybe then the lack of praise and applause for a very okay performance wouldn’t be so jarring, so humiliating.
This blog post probably won’t change your life. The leftovers in the fridge aren’t going to blow my family away at dinner tonight. My kids aren’t going to sing my praises for taking a deep breath instead of yelling. Jeff might not notice the way I scrape the bottom of my energy reserves to give him my full attention at the end of a hard day.
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians he says “I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”
Maybe a worthy life is the one we hold loosely. The one where most of the time we’re figuring it all out as we go with patience, with curiosity, with love, scattering seeds the whole way.
Photo by Joshua Lanzarini on Unsplash