The Fire Within

(Author's note: Here's a post that I worked on a long time ago but never finished. At the moment I am typing up another post about more of my recent thoughts, but in the meantime here's this. Sorry for being absent for so long, but hey, my summer was great!)

Originally written: March 2017

I was thinking some deep thoughts about fire the other day...probably brought on by the campfire we had a few weeks ago. It was a lot of fun, of course, to crowd around it and snack on s'mores, shivering whenever the cold wind blew...but we always had to be careful to not get too close or else we'd be burned.

That thought set me thinking about other kinds of fire. Do you have a passion? A wish for the future? A hobby? A particular book or movie that you really like? I do, and most of the time those are good things have. But at this point I have learned that those kind of things can burn us just as much as a physical, roaring flame.

I spoke about chapters in life a few blog posts ago. I have named some of my chapters, including the one which I am about to relate. It is titled "The Fiction Obsession".

You see, about three or four years ago, I had a serious problem with writing. I've always loved to make up stories, and I still do, but at this particular episode in life, it had consumed me.

The story that I was writing at the time was all I ever thought about. I was always in a different world, always having conversations going on in my head, always rushing through the day so I could write. It messed with my schoolwork, my chores, and my family life. When I wasn't writing, I was reading a fiction book or wishing for a good movie. (Granted, our movie selection is rather small even with filtering.) 

 I'm sorry to say that I wasted a whole summer doing this. While my family spent the evenings outside, watering our gardens or playing ball, I was inside sitting at a computer, my fingers getting sore from typing.

And what do you know? In the end, I grew frustrated with discontentment and restlessness, and blaming it on the story's dullness, I trashed it. Just like the millions of others.

What I wouldn't give to have all that time back. (Not the story back...it was actually awful.) Think of it---a whole summer of learning, of growing, of loving! It was all my fault---all because I let a hobby, an ultimately useless thing, become too important. My parents had warned me of this, but I had completely pushed away their advice. 

************

Annnnnd then they put me on a fiction fast. Both reading it and writing it. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy about that at the time. But guess what, it helped! 

Of course, over the years I have had to work on not falling back into it again, and learning what times are the right times to enjoy my hobbies. But for the most part, I've gotten much better at it. 

That's why you've got to involve your parents in your life, I've learned. Even if they do something you don't really like, it can really help you in the long run and give you perspective when you're older.

God wants us to have a plan for the future (Proverbs 28:19), and not waste our time in the present. It's a hard thing to balance sometimes, because we're also not suppose to always be thinking about what happens tomorrow. There's a "happy medium" as my Dad says, and it's our job---each one of us individually---to find it.  And making sure our true fire within is the Lord, guiding us in all we do.   

************