This is what I am now.

I’m beat. I’ve been beat all day.

The day previous to my writing this, I was in the hospital. Lung infection. It was grand, let me tell you.

Today I knew I wouldn’t get much done. And it’s true; I haven’t. In my “day job” I’m a minister. It’s still where I spend most of my time, and gratefully. I’ve been very blessed to serve where I am. However, that work requires a lot of time and energy. Writing a sermon is not a simple matter. Visiting hurting people can’t be done when you’re distracted. However, given that I’m in recovery, I wasn’t expecting to do a whole lot. And it’s true; I didn’t do a whole lot today.

Writing isn’t a simple matter, either. Creating worlds out of thoughts takes effort and energy and can leave a person exhausted. Which means I didn’t expect to do much writing today, either.

And yet, here I am. This post marks more than 2000 words written. Now, that’s not a great day of writing for me, but it’s a far cry from nothing!

And it reveals something to me:

I was able to conjure up the energy to write. I wasn’t pushing myself. I wasn’t getting nosebleeds or hemorrhaging or anything to push these words out. It was still work, mind you, but it was work that could be accomplished.

In fact, I was able to do more writing than I was doing ministry.

I tried to do some worship planning for upcoming weeks. I already had the themes of the services planned out. All I had to do was pick an appropriate number of songs for each service out of a list of selected songs.

That was too much for me. My brain could not hold the concepts of service themes and matching them to music. I set it aside fairly quickly.

I was supposed to write the rough draft of a sermon. I already have a 600 word outline; the sermon itself I aim to be between 1500 and 1800 words. In other words, it wouldn’t be a lot of work.

Again, my brain said, “Nope! Not gonna happen!”

And today I’m not pushing myself.

But writing for non-ministry purposes? I’m able to do this. Here; this post proves it!

This situation tells me something interesting: My brain is formatting so that writing is still work, but less work than ministry. I’m becoming more and more a writer and less and less a minister.

That doesn’t mean I’m leaving the ministry. At least, not yet! That day may well come, though I suspect it’s many years in the future yet.

It does mean I need to be careful. I love writing. Dreaming up worlds of fiction to tell stories has been something I’ve done for a long, long time. But I can’t let my writing get in the way of serving as a minister, either. Writing is still work, but it’s not my “day job.”

I still find it interesting, though, that I can do this but not plan worship when I’m bone tired.

I guess this is what I am now.

I’m a writer.

Well. Probably should be getting back to the writing then, huh?