The Art of Filling

I can still feel the day I realized what real thirst meant. Not just the parch-lipped, sticky-tongued kind of thirst of breathing hard on a hot day or even the wobbly buzz of sweaty dehydration. This was something else entirely.

When my youngest was a toddler, I had to fast for a while before a medical procedure. This wouldn’t have been a big deal if my daughter hadn’t silently shared a brewing stomach bug with me as a parting gift. Within a few hours after my procedure, I couldn’t even keep water down.

I don’t remember much about the following 24 hours, but my husband tells me I don’t really want to. What I do remember is a blur of saline drips and frantic ER doctors trying to manage my crashing blood pressure – that, and for some reason I can’t explain, being absolutely sure the nurses were trying to kill me with saltine crackers. Dehydration-induced delirium is a wild ride.

I woke up the next afternoon in my own quiet bed, bewildered and disoriented. It wasn’t just that I didn’t know how I got home. My body felt weird.

Every cell felt empty, like a sponge gone hard and dry.

Although I’d been pumped full of so much saline that I wasn’t dehydrated anymore, my body hadn’t gotten the message yet. My kids wanted to hug their mama and my husband wanted to make sure I was coherent after my saltine cracker murder rant. But all I could think of was water.

Tall glasses of water with crystal clear ice.

Condensation droplets shimmering like tiny jewels.

Leaping, dancing waterfalls.

White water tumbling over rapids.

River water.

Rain water.

Pond water.

Pool water.

In those half-awake first moments, I desperately wanted to be a fish.

It took days before my water craving began to fade to regular thirst and my strength began to return. And it was weeks before I was steady enough to function like normal. I had to take time to refill before I was ready to be productive, a lesson I’ve needed to remember recently.

Since I was old enough to form letters, I’ve interacted with the world through creative writing. In some seasons poems, songs, and articles flow as effortlessly as a waterfall. Other times it’s more like a muddy trickle. And sometimes I’m as dry as a hard sponge.

Between ministry demands and family needs, the last three years have been intensely draining, a little like an ill-timed stomach bug. (Gross, maybe, but it feels accurate.) I haven’t had energy to invest in much beyond survival, so the flow of words completely stopped for a season. I barely remembered I could write – until a mutual friend told me I needed to know Rachel. She was right.

The first time I had coffee with Rachel, I described myself as a recovering writer. She nodded thoughtfully and asked, “So, what are you doing to recover?”

Good question.

As another writer who’s had her own dry seasons, Rachel knew that I wouldn’t recover unless I started wrestling with words again. Her question made me realize how much I missed the part of myself that used to catch ideas and pen them down. At the same time, I knew I couldn’t write much while I was still so drained.

So I started reading instead. At first it was just a chapter here and a short story there, until I began to wake up and feel my thirst for more. I haven’t been able to get enough. I’ve been taking in great gulps of rich, meaningful words everywhere I can find them.

Books on art.

Books on writing.

Collections of poetry waiting like quiet pools.

Novels sprinkled with glistening characters.

Fresh, cascading song lyrics.

Blogs and articles and podcasts by artists and authors who draw from deep wisdom wells.

As my dried up heart softens in this sea of beauty, I’m remembering a crucial truth: Filling my mind with other artists’ creativity is in itself an act of creation.

In his book Rembrandt is in the Wind, Russ Ramsey says, “Artists draw inspiration from other artists because beauty doesn’t just fill us with wonder; it drives us to go create beautiful things ourselves.”

Beauty generates beauty.

Reading may seem passive, but wrestling honestly with a thoughtful book takes effort and intentionality. So does getting out into the sunshine or putting on a classic jazz record or meeting a good friend for lunch. These are all work, the kind that stretches our capacity to hold goodness and carves our own deep wells.

This is my work for now. I’m in active recovery, building capacity to be productive in a new season of writing. Little splashes of words are starting to bubble up and spill over as I practice the art of filling. And it’s so, so good.

There’s no shame, friend, in months of silence and seasons of need. Let the emptiness drive you to fill up on the beauty others have created. This, too, is art.

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable — if there is any moral excellence and if there is anything praiseworthy — dwell on these things” (Philippians 4:8, CSB).

Some of the literary wells I’ve been drinking from recently:

• Beyond Chittering Cottage: Poems of Place by Rachel S. Donahue
• Rembrandt is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art Through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey
• An Axe For the Frozen Sea: Conversations with poets about what matters most by Ben Palpant
• A Blossom in the Desert: Reflections of Faith in the Art and Writing of Lilias Trotter by Lilias Trotter and Miriam Huffman Rockness

And one upcoming literary well that includes two of my little poetic splashes of words:

• I’ve Got a Bad Case of Poetry Edited by Rachel S. Donahue and Illustrated by Emily J. Person