Show Up Anyway

even when you don't feel like it

Ask any writer for their top piece of writing advice and more than likely their response will, in some way, include consistency. Write. Write. Write.

a little bit every day

prioritize it

even when you don’t feel like it

That last one hits a nerve these days . . .

	. . . even when you don’t feel like lit.

	. . . even when the well of inspiration feels dried up, empty but for dirt and dust and cracked earth.

	. . . even when you’re afraid this will be the time your creative gift will fail to show up.

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If you’ve been following me from the beginning, you know I started this blog in a delayed response to an invitation to write that I had been sensing from God since 2016. When a friend introduced me to the world of Substack, I had just taken a fairly big professional leap into entrepreneurship, so I borrowed and stretched some of that courage to include a weekly writing commitment, a public commitment at that.

But it also became an additional opportunity to live wholehearted (thus the name of the blog), which I describe as an intentional, dogged pursuit of authenticity, a purposed alignment of who I am on the outside with who I am on the inside. This writing commitment has helped me make sense of myself, the world, and my experience of this life as one who longs to encounter a God who is Love and to reflect Love in ever increasing ways.

Two and a half years of weekly writing and posting later (apart from a few predetermined breaks), my creativity feels elusive, like it’s hiding in the shadows inviting me to a game of hide-and-seek I’m not interested in playing.

But here I am —

writing anyway.

exposing my struggle.

revealing insecurity that questions whether I have anything more to say, at least anything that’s valuable or worth sharing.

But what I’m still learning is that this too is showing up wholehearted.

It’s not just the free-flowing words, the easy imagery that inspires the perfect turn of phrase to pierce the heart.

It’s also the barely-breathing heart braving the wilderness, the empty hands offering the real, raw, shriveled-up bits of her so that we all can have permission and courage to show up just as we are. And that’s when, if I can shush the voices insisting I stay hidden or give up altogether, I just might hear a faint refrain, “You’re seen and loved. My power is made perfect in your weakness. Keep showing up.”

Learning to live wholehearted looks like showing up anyway with what I have in my hands, even if it feels like nothing . . . maybe, just maybe, that’s everything.

That’s what I’m here for. I hope you’re here for that too.

Until next time,

Kerry