When You Can't Write, Take a Picture

It only took me a few days to grab the camera. 

The secrets came out, my life changed in a matter of minutes, and all of the things I thought about writing—the ideas, the lists of stories in my notebook, the maybe this is going to be the year for the proposal gusto—it all took a back seat, and a distant one, to what was right in front of me: my six kids, my broken heart, and the school lunches that still needed to be made in the morning.

Trauma, stress, loss, grief, anything unexpected—even if it’s not devastating—can change just about everything at a moment’s notice. My 5:00am wake up calls, the ones I looked forward to, the habit I’ve cultivated for the better part of the last seven years, waking up to pray and write and keep inching my way toward the essays that my heart longed to wrestle to the page, all of that disappeared. I was a woman who didn’t want the morning to come. Who peeked out from the covers that I kept pulled up tightly between my shoulder and my cheek to see the time at 6:05am, 6:17am, 6:32am and just kept saying, five more minutes, five more minutes, five more minutes. 

This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening.

The sun always came up though, even when I didn’t want it to. The baby traded the morning coos from his crib for yells that he wasn’t going to wait any longer. The toddlers needed new diapers. The big kids asked for eggs.

Somehow, we kept going. 

But for weeks, no words came out. I don’t even remember if I wanted them to, or if I was done. But I knew, in those weeks, I couldn’t be a storyteller. There was, maybe is, too much to live before I can tell. 

But, that doesn’t mean I didn’t notice. I noticed a lot.

I noticed how the snow drifts were blowing on the roads in the most beautiful, whimsical patterns. 

I noticed how my kindergartener wanted to wear his nice shoes for chapel at school on Wednesday, and how that made me smile for the first time in three days.

I noticed how the few fleeting hours of winter sunshine gave my living room the coziest, warm hue right around 2:00pm.

I noticed how good it felt to just finish something, anything—the laundry, the dishes, paperwork.

I noticed how soft the blanket a friend dropped off really was.

So it only took me a few days to grab the camera. 

Something about taking pictures, about noticing, about still capturing the time and light in a meaningful way, it reminded me that—not to be dramatic here—I’m not dead inside. I’m alive. I’m doing it. My eyes still notice, my heart still wants to create. I see my limits, and I feel them in my heart. The words will be slow, measured, largely private in this season. 

But the moments? They are still there. The good life is, too. And until I can get back to center, I’ll just be here, a slight pivot from my normal lane, making bread, trying homemade salad dressings, memorizing the color of kids eyes next to the soft light of the window, learning manual settings on my camera. 

Sometimes you just can’t make what you’ve always made. 

But maybe you can still make something. 

Are you in a season where you’re struggling to make what you’ve always made? What would a creative pivot look like for you? Are there any other lanes you might like to try running in, while you find your way back?