From the bucket seat…

I’ve had trouble writing the past few weeks. All the ideas I had seemed to be shallow and dull, and my attempts to flesh them out felt awkward, clunky. I have a list of ideas, but I would scan down the list, thinking, “Nope…nope…nope.” Since nothing new was working well, I recycled some old columns; if anyone experienced deja vu, they haven’t mentioned it to me.
But I needed to figure out why it was such an arduous process lately. Where had all my ideas gone? Today, while I was at lunch, I figured it out.
My dad used to say that you’ve got to empty out your bucket if you want God to fill it up. I think my bucket had gotten so full that there was very little room for new ideas, new blessings. Full of what? Supply your own joke, if you want, but the real answer is that it was mostly full of me. Periodically I start thinking I’m pretty important, that I’ve finally got it all figured out. Some part of my brain tells me that I can wax eloquently on any subject, answer any question, leap any tall building with a single bound. Pretty soon I’ve got a bucket full of ego, self-importance and superiority. And I don’t notice it until suddenly I reach for some inspiration and find…only me.
I mentioned awhile back that we had rented a dumpster in the process of cleaning house. It was the smartest thing we ever did. Out went tons of old stuff I’d been saving, things that I had built up to be important. We had room to move furniture around, room to actually walk in our walk-in closet, room for new, more worthy things.
At the beginning of this new year, I need to perform the same emptying of myself, to make room for more of God and what he wants me to learn. It turns out that I don’t have it all figured out. And knowing that is the first step toward wisdom.