I’m starting this blog as a step of faith, and to push back against my struggle with worthiness.

For the past eight years I have taught English classes at a community college. I’ve been an adjunct because that’s what’s worked best with our family schedules and demands. It has allowed me to parent our children and work from home and maintain the flexibility and alone time I need as an HSP (highly sensitive person). Eight years ago, we really needed my income. We lived tight and made life work. That’s not our story now, and I’m coming to realize the amount of stress I carry to juggle that job and care for our kids and watch my writing life continually get bumped to the back burner and then completely off the counter for months at a time is just not worth it anymore. Especially not for the amount I get paid. So I’m going to quit my job after this semester and take the leap to try and write instead.

Processing that possibility has unleashed a struggle with worthiness.

Being able to write full-time has been what I’ve thought I’ve wanted for years. It’s been the illusive, unrealistic dream. And now that it’s an actual possibility it’s scaring me shitless.

What if I try this and I don’t make it?

What does “making it” even mean?

What if no one wants to read what I write?

What if I can’t get published or build a platform and I just spend hours churning out words and after all that I’m left with not much to show for it?

What if I waste my time?

What if I get hit with writer’s block I can’t get past?

What if I quit bringing in income?

What if my writing never makes any money?

What would that mean for my self-worth?

I never wanted to be a full-time stay at home mom. If I quit my job and stay home to write, does that make me a stay-at-home mom?

Will not bringing in income take away my right to ask my husband to split the weight of running our home? I don’t want to quit teaching just to pick up more at home and still watch my writing slide to the back burner.

As I’m scarily vulnerable and voice these questions rattling around in my being, I can hear the absurdity of some of them. And yet, there they are. I must face them. Is my self-worth that low that I’m tied to feeling worthy by what I contribute to the monetary gain of our family? Is my worthiness tied to what I earn, by not being weak, or pulling more than my fair share of the weight? If letting go of the stress of teaching and embracing writing would make me a more fulfilled person, a less angry wife, and a calmer more present parent, wouldn’t that be worth it? Can I let go of my ego enough to embrace this margin that could be offered to me?

All those questions I listed above are tied to my false self. They are questions of the egoic operating system. They are false questions. I know this.

I’ve been reading and sitting with Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation this week. In chapter five entitled, “Things in Their Identity,” he writes, “A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him. It ‘consents,’ so to speak, to His creative love” (29).

Is writing my way of consenting to God’s creative love?

Merton continues, “But what about you? What about me?

“Unlike the animals and the trees, it is not enough for us to be what our nature intends. It is not enough for us to be individual men [or women!]. For us, holiness is more than humanity. If we are never anything but men, never anything but people, we will not be saints and we will not be able to offer to God the worship of our imitation, which is sanctity.

“It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists in being your self and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours […]

“For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self. […] To put it better, we are even called to share with God in the work of creating the truth of our identity. We can evade this responsibility by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living. It is quite easy, it seems to please everyone. But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high. To work out our own identity in God, which the Bible calls ‘working out our salvation,’ is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to God as He reveals Himself, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation. We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be. The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be” (31-33).

In my journey, writing is part of my spiritual practice. It is ground for me to set aside the false self that clamors for a false sense of worthiness and open myself to something beyond me. It is a chance to stop wearing a mask. What that will look like in the working out, I have no idea. It may not ever lead to what the external world would consider “success.” And can I be okay with that? Because if writing is truly part of my true self, then I will do it for the sake of doing it, because I hear the call and I am compelled. The rest is not up to me. Can I be okay with that?

I want to be. I want to have that courage. I want to listen to better voices that the ones that scream about my worthiness or fear for my inadequacy. I want to believe that I can silence those false voices and sit down every morning to write. But I also know it won’t be that easy. If I do this—I am going to do this—I will have to fight them every day. I will have to choose what I know is better despite how I feel. I will have to make choices to believe I am worthy, whether or not my emotions concur. I will have to believe in something beyond me, regardless of whether or not it materializes into something concretely visible.

Merton writes, “We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal. We may be true or false, the choice is ours (32).

What choice will I make?

This year?

This month?

This week?

This day?

This hour?

This moment?

What choice will you make?