My Lily

I’ve been feeling rather overwhelmed with my writing lately particularly, the book that I’m writing. I got to the point where I just didn’t want to even look at it anymore. When I did look at it, I felt frustrated and just plain confused.

I thought that I’d done the hard part—writing it. But reflecting back, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Actually writing the whole bones of my children’s book, which from this moment onward I will be referring to as Lily, took me about six months—that was two years ago.

Lily is over 25,000 words and that might not seem so long for a lot of people, particularly those who have written novels with 80-100,000 words or love reading full-length novels, but to me it is enormous.

I got lost in the words, I didn’t know which way was up or what was right or inside-out. If you asked me what the theme of my book was, I couldn’t tell you because somewhere in the 20,000+ words and the two years I’ve been writing, it got lost. Why was I even writing this book?

I’ve had numerous people read Lily at different stages, all of whom have been so incredibly encouraging and also offering their opinions and suggestions, which have helped me to continue to move forward. Thank you!

A couple of months ago I printed Lily off again. Completely disillusioned with reading her on the screen I thought, if I have her on paper, then maybe I’d be able to make some more sense of this absolute mess I’ve made of her.

I started reading and chucked her down with disgust, I was bored after the first page! She went on the pile on the desk. You know, that annoying pile that keeps growing and nobody actually knows what’s in it.

I have a wonderful husband, he’d read Lily two years ago, when I triumphantly and incredibly naively, pushed back from the computer and announced, “I’m done!”

He took her up again and began to, in my opinion, labour through the manuscript. I couldn’t watch him read, so I left him to it. Walking in and out of the room on the days he was reading Lily, I could see him writing and marking things, circling and crossing out. When he finished, this is what he handed me:

 

 I couldn’t believe it. First of all, he actually read through the whole manuscript and then secondly, he said there were times he couldn’t even stop reading when he knew that he should stop and write a comment. What an encouragement.

I know that giving a spouse or someone who loves you very much something to critique isn’t the best choice, if you want an unbiased opinion. But really, I didn’t need an unbiased opinion I needed someone to say, “Keep at it. I enjoyed reading it. There is a lot more here that you can fix, but it’s fixable and I believe in you.”

So, here goes, another edit. According to my computer count it’s number 38 but really that was only after I actually started counting and we’ve changed computers and moved country and interstate in between.

Who knows where this next step will take me.

Do You Have a Favourite Reading Spot?

My favourite reading spot when I was about thirteen was a huge boulder, which sat on the edge of our hydro creek. The boulder was covered in moss and lichen, orchids and shrubs. The generator rumbled away in its little shack behind and the water gushing out of the turbine created a roaring waterfall, which fed into a small creek.

On particularly hard days, when I wanted to disappear for a while, I would take the dirt track from our house, climb over the fence and follow the stony pathway along the creek. This path was a haven for me. The sound of the creek rushing over stones and splashing down mini waterfalls, hedged in by green cushioned rocks and thick ferns was a fantasy world. The air around was cooled by the leafy trees, which stretched over my head filtering the sun. The path wound around bends, disappeared down little gullies and climbed small hills. It seemed to me that it could stretch on forever. Really, it was probably just my dawdling that made the walks take so long. I would stop to watch the creek, running my fingers through the icy water, imagining sprites playing in the liquid amber, listen to the birds and think how wonderful it would be to fly and wandering off into the bush looking for secret clearings.

Then I would get to my boulder and climb up the rough surface. Grabbing on to the flexible branches of small trees and carefully skirting around the orchids so as not to crush the delicate flowers to find the perfect place to sit on the soft moss. Making sure I was hidden from anyone’s sight below.

I could sit there for hours and get lost in my books. One of my favourite books at the time was, The Hawk And The Jewel by Lori Wick. The story was about Sunny Gallagher, a young English girl who was thought to be lost at sea when she was a baby but had been rescued and brought up by the emir of Darhabar, on the Arabian coast. At thirteen, Sunny is whisked back to England where she has to relearn all that she has grown up knowing. She meets her ‘real’ family, has to learn how to dress properly and eat English food. She has to figure out how to live in this strange new world, how to act, talk and even think like a proper English woman.

My confused heart related so well to Sunny and her struggle to find her place in another culture and learn to love another family. I soaked it all in while I sat on my boulder with the sound of the hydro generator thrumming through me, and the smell of damp earth surrounding me.

Reluctantly, I would come back to reality, often at the sound of kids running past and me ducking my head to keep out of sight. I would climb down from my hiding place and make my way slowly home; head in the clouds, dreaming of places I had never been. 

That walk home—along my haven path—was like a slow shedding of the fantasy and stepping back into reality.

 

How Many Lives Will It Cost Before We Open Up Our Hearts?

When I saw the picture of your lifeless body washed up on the beach of the Turkish coast, thousands of miles from here. I saw my son. And I can’t stop the tears because you were so young and so at the mercy of those around you and you were rejected and it cost you your life. 

Oh God, please forgive us our complacency and our love of comfort and wealth, which costs the world so much. It demands the lives of innocent children, sending them to their deaths. We who live in countries, which are so wealthy and vast cannot open up our doors and our lives to you who simply want a chance to live in a place where there is no conflict and no war, no indiscriminate killing and no hunger and abject poverty.

We have all the water that we want and the food that we want and all the space that we want and yet we do not share because we are afraid.

Dear little boy, it is true we in the west are afraid of you and because of that crippling fear we let you die. You, who only lived for three short years, you who will never grow up, never learn to read, never kick another ball, never make life altering decisions, never taste the freedom here on earth that the few of us have. Your young life consisted of growing up in a country filled with war and hate. All your family wanted was for you to taste the sweetness of security and peace.

We in the west have seen your picture, your image seared into our minds and I pray that it will open up our hearts and our eyes to understand what is truly happening in the world.

Here in Australia we like to think that we are a country of opportunity and that we give everyone ‘a fair go’—as long as they come here in the appropriate manner and are deemed acceptable.

We cannot comprehend what it is to only know fear and hunger and pain and terror. We do not understand true poverty, no clean water, no inside plumbing, no weekly rubbish collection. We have no idea what its like to run and run and run and never escape the guns and soldiers, war lords, kidnappers and slave traders.

We do not understand, so we prefer to close our eyes and not think about it.

We say, “That was irresponsible to try and go to a country so far away. Your parents should have tried somewhere closer.” Ignoring the fact that all the countries that surround yours are packed to the hilt and cannot support any more refugees.

We say, “Don’t come here, we are an island and you will die if you try to come.” Ignoring the obvious that you will die if you do not try. Ignoring the fact that there is no other way. Ignoring the fact that you and your neighbours have already died a thousand times. Like that time when the bombs first fell and the houses were blown apart. Or the time your friend, watched soldiers kill his father and older brothers. Then there was the time that the men came and took your nine-year old neighbour away to sell her as a sex slave. You died and died and died again.

And now I begin to understand why you would try and get as far away as possible and risk your very life for a chance of freedom.

Now you, sweet innocent have crossed a line in the sand and cannot be ignored. 

All our wealth will rot if we cannot give it away. All our comfort and security is false if we cannot share it with those who need it most.

May we learn, that no matter what the motivations of a few maybe, innocent lives are lost when we indiscriminately reject everyone seeking refuge because the do not fit the mold or follow the rules.

So, young one, you challenge me. I pray that I have the courage to move over, to share some space, to share my feast table—the blessings that have been entrusted to me so that I can in turn bless others.

And I pray, knowing that you are safe in the arms of the one who loves us all more than we can ever comprehend, that we will learn to love abundantly, freely and without fear.