I wrote the essay below quickly, as I do everything I write. It always feels good to let the truth speak itself, even if it is against yourself. I am glad you liked reading a new essay on Fishpond. Well, you did, didn't you :) Here is my MP3 for the week: By Her Grace (A Hershey Kiss from Heaven). It's a look back at a spiritual memory. Taste it on your tongue. Go to Audio and it will be at the top.

Experiencing Resistance

I picked up The War of Art and began reading it. I had ordered it on the suggestion of a friend who knew I was experiencing resistance in regard to my writing. In less than ten minutes I was hit by an avalanche of understanding....about every negativity I had in relation to Bob’s illness. The author had explained it all.

Not only was I devastated by the diagnosis of “incurable,” I was devastated by my own reaction to my new job as caregiver. I didn’t want to do it. I was furious, rageful and downright disgusted. Surely I would not be asked to shepherd a second family member through a fatal cancer. But I had been picked by the Ironic Selection Committee to do just that.

I felt guilty almost every day at the fact that I was mad as hell about this cancer. Sometimes I would look at my husband and vow he was making it all up just to bring me down. Really. I was that distraught.

What I read in The War of Art is how every noble endeavor arouses resistance, and being a caregiver pushed every button I had so carefully hidden. Instead of feeling guilty, I should have felt the truth of what God was asking me to do....care for a beloved spouse when his time had come.

And so I began....and in that beginning I received my true calling....to write about the very experiences I was resisting so mightily. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I chronicled our experiences with what would turn out to be almost a five-year-battle with multiple myeloma. On December 20, 2004, the cancer won. I surrendered my husband to the good earth and walked on alone.

But now I am partnered with my calling, an inexorable march into the heart of fear. For only in that will I hear God saying to me, Well done.