Inspired Living In A Bathrobe

I didn’t even get dressed for most of the day Thursday; I hung around in my bathrobe reading Stephen King’s short story collection Everything’s Eventual while waiting for the UPS man to show up with a package.

Yes, I had all sorts of duties to attend to but I just didn’t have the spirit or energy to do any of it.

After any victory I feel letdown. I expected to spring back with renewed energy within a week of getting Glog finally published, but instead I feel too sluggish to ever want to write another word.

You know the feeling?

It’s sort of like the way I feel on Christmas night; the presents have been opened, the feast celebrated, the guests have left, the football games have been won or lost, the worst of the debris picked up – then you crash.

That’s me and writing.

I know what my next project is but my exhilaration is drained and I’m reluctant to touch it.

Last week my eldest daughter offered to carpet our bedroom with some brand new carpet left over from her new home. The carpet in our bedroom has been there for over ten years and shows a bit of wear… but the thought of disrupting our life and moving furniture and extensive cleaning dismayed us. Ginny and I turned down Jennifer’s offer.

The old carpet’s not going anywhere, neither are we.

Thursday afternoon a neighbor called asking me to look at a workbench he is taking out because of extensive renovations to his house. I can have it if I want. It is a beautiful, sturdy, solid workbench… but the thought of all the labor I’d have to do to clear an area and transfer it to our house daunts me.

I feel too bone weary and depleted to even want to improve our own home.

I feel as though I’ve been whipping a dead horse to make him trot a few more miles.

Hey, I’ve reached a point where Stephen King stories cheer me up.

What I need to do is get off my lazy ass, get dressed, and get to work.

Over the years I’ve found the best help in my own Christian life is to learn about the lives of other Christians in their struggles.

About 15 years ago InterVarsity Press published one of my books which they titled People Whose Faith Got Them Into Trouble. Sales proved less than spectacular and the English language edition soon went out of print and the rights reverted to me -- although the book was picked up and translated by foreign publishers and I think it is still available in German, Afrikaans and Philippine editions.

Over the years I’ve added several chapters on people who inspire me. The new chapters just about double the size of the book So that is my next writing project, i.e. to restructure those biographical profiles and re-issue the book under my own title, Strangers On The Earth.

That’s what I’m working on (or should be) at the moment.

The title comes from a phrase in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews, “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off … They were pilgrims and strangers on the earth”.

One of the women profiled in the book is Madam Jeanne Guyon, a lady who lived in the time of King Louis XIV, one of the most corrupt courts ever in Europe. The link is to my profile of her life.

I view this lady with awe. If anybody anywhere ever earned the right to lounge around in a bathrobe all day and mope, it would have been her.

But she didn’t.

Her life inspires me to wrestle on in faith, to claim victory in Jesus, to win the lost, to challenge the devil in his lair --- or at least to go ahead and get dressed for today.

Some days, even when you feel inspired, getting dressed is all you can manage.