Confessions of a Procrastinator

Sometimes we just get it wrong.  I knew my editor wanted me to take on a new project, and I really could not get excited.  My enthusiasm and motivation were stumbling around like drunks in the dark, and I kept bumping up against what felt like a cement wall of writer’s block.  Rather than confront my own inertia, I simply did everything I could to avoid meeting with my editor.  It seemed easier to engage in avoidance rather than open my eyes to the possibilities of words and images that lay dormant in my mind.  I just got it wrong.  It wasn’t that avoidance itself was wrong. Rather, it was the avoidance of the wrong thing that was keeping me bound.

In every instance in the Bible where the word ‘avoid’ is used, it refers to dodging those things and people that drag our souls down, that keep us locked in unhealthy patterns, that promise more than they can deliver.  Yet, so often what we seek to avoid is what seems inconvenient, uncomfortable, distasteful, demanding.  We avoid the people and things that get in our way, or that confront us with the truth about ourselves, or that intrude on our plans.  In truth, it is often the very thing we are avoiding that will unlock our soul from habits that may feel comfortable but actually have diminished our spiritual health.  

The very demands of my editor were the medicine I needed to be freed from the stranglehold of writer’s block.  As long as I avoided the wrong thing, I remained caught in my own creative emptiness.  When I let go of my avoidance. I found that what I had been avoiding was the very ticket to unlocking my soul from that creative emptiness.

When you find yourself trying to circumvent something or someone that seems unpleasant to you, simply ask yourself if you’ve got it wrong.  Look well within— you may find you’re avoiding the wrong thing!