writing – Page 2 – jj barrows

fear has a seat

Hi Family! Well, it’s been a while, a LONG while, and I apologize.

The last we spoke about my book (or I wrote) it was Christmas time and I was in South Carolina packing up my childhood home and saying goodbye to my last Christmas in that house. Sorry to get all sappy so soon. The process was long and hard, but good and necessary and ultimately I’m glad I was at home to help my mom, be with my grandmother and get to know my brother better.

I’m back in California and this year looks incredibly different from last year. I’ve embarked on a journey of pursuing art (in all forms) and have rediscovered my love for creating not just with words but with color. I’ve been painting like a mad woman and even went mad for a little bit as I tried to figure out the difference between work and play when you do something you love. I didn’t know I had a little diva in me until I got to the point of thinking my friends weren’t as important as my time painting. I never want to forget the importance of people and that no amount of money will ever replace them.

It’s hard because painting is how I am trying to make a living, which I love AND it also requires a lot of work outside of a 9-5 job. BUT painting non-stop isn’t what will define me as a painter, it’s what will define me as a workaholic and no different from the people who are slaving away at their jobs missing out on life and the people in front of them. I love painting, but it’s not my foundation nor what defines my value and I have to admit over a short span of time I managed to forget that. HOW DOES IT HAPPEN SO QUICKLY!?!

That said, I’m still trying to figure out how to make this all work. People on social media would see me as having a blast… and that’s true… I am having so much fun living out who I was created to be and functioning the way I was wired to function as a creative. AND, I’m also scared. I’m scared because for as fun as this all is, there’s no safety nets or guarantees. It’s like surfing… fun when you catch the wave, scary when it’s not guaranteed you will and the big ones take you under. The ocean is beautiful and its power is scary.

I go from selling high end art pieces and feeling safe to three weeks going by without selling anything and uncertain as to whether or not I will be able to pay rent. It’s scary to be down to the wire with no funds in the bank account. But I gotta say, it’s worth it when you get that message at midnight that someone wants to buy a painting they just saw. A sigh of relief never felt so good.

Fear is a necessary part of the process, of any process. To not have fear is to not be human and to miss out on the exhilarating feeling of the fear being silenced as the LORD comes in with the last minute save. In order to be excited over provision, one must have first experienced the fear of being without.

I have welcomed fear as part of the process, part of my humanity, but (as I learned recently from Elizabeth Gilbert) I tell fear it is not allowed to make any decisions. I’ve recently painted a chair for fear to sit in while I am in the room painting. Fear creeps in and tells me I’ll never sell anything, I’m broke, I’ll never be able to do this. I thank fear for its concern, recognizing that maybe its just trying to keep me in check the same way it did when I was in the water that day and the waves were too big for my strength. “Thank you, fear, I’m just painting, no one is going to die, you can go have a seat.” This is my new practice instead of beating myself up or giving into fear. Maybe fear isn’t such a bad thing, we just have to know how to handle it.

All of this to say, that is what I have been up to and much of it has to do with the process of my book. As some of you know I submitted it in its completion back in December. It has failed the content evaluation three times. Each time I sanitize my voice a little more to meet the high standards of the Christian publishing company. With this last attempt I decided I couldn’t sanitize my voice any further just for the sake of being published. I have no interest in being published just to publish, I have an interest in sharing the cold, hard truth about the goodness and toughness of life. Everyone wants to say Jesus saves but nobody wants to say why or what from.

So, I’m having a hard time trying to figure out what to do. I am past the point of getting a refund and I’ve tried to submit to a few traditional publishers but with my last attempt came the cold, hard truth that nobody really knows who I am to care enough about what I have to say. Ouch. Rejection is a part of the process, I get that, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

So I’m praying, and any of you who are willing, asking you for prayer too… about what to do next. I want to be willing to learn and flexible to change what I need to, but I also want to value my voice and the truth God has set me free to speak.

For now, I paint and I pray and I tell fear to have a seat.

Love, J

van realities

Me again with a riveting new video update!

As most of you know, my home base has been a VW van for the last four-ish months. Good grief. It is neither as creepy nor as adventurous as it sounds. I mean, it’s both of those things, but they are not mutually exclusive… nor are the pictures on Facebook or Instagram the full story (which I’m sure is true for most people).

As I’ve already shared with the people who have supported my book campaign, I’d like to also share with you a few of the real thoughts that come along with van life. I’m in a transitional season of life, not just because I live in a transit system, but because Aslan is on the move, as they would say in Narnia, and a change is gonna come, as Sam Cooke so perfectly sang back in his day.

With van life weighing on me while trying to do ministry and work another job to help supplement, and now having my book funded without much time or energy or goodnight-sleeps to be able to work on it, my season of van life is soon coming to an end, at least as a home base (Reggie June will still very much be a part of my life). I’m in the process of figuring out what my next steps are, as my time working at church is also coming to an end this month.

While I am excited, it took a lot of processing and admitting of my own struggles to be able to start moving into this next season of life, one of more stability… and one that gives momma a lot more reassurance about where her daughter is sleeping at night 🙂

I do not know exactly what is next, aside from lots of writing and coffee, and I do not know exactly where that writing and coffee will take place, my compass seems to be a bit broken. BUT, I do know that though much of my time and attention will be devoted to writing, my life has to include they very thing I sometimes forget I need, which isn’t a thing at all, but in fact, people… relationships built on human interaction. For as much as I love venturing off on some grand adventure, I think that doing life with people is perhaps the greatest adventure… even if it means staying put long enough to see their ugly, and long enough for them to see yours. Being loved through your ugly is quite an adventure.

To those who have been with me on this journey, and those who have shown their support in countless ways… Thank you, thank you, thank you for your help.

thank you

writing a book

Hey Friends, family and the like…

I’m finally writing a book… based on this blog.

And here’s how you can help make it happen!

CLICK HERE:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/it-s-called-a-spade/x/6955591

journey

I currently have 38 drafts saved in my Tumblr account. Unfinished and unpublished, none of these drafts occurred within this new year and I don’t even know how many of them occurred within the last year. I suppose I wrote a few times last year, but mostly I just posted pictures of food and became really unhealthy in the process.

Somewhere along life’s journey I got lost… again. I look back on the life I have lived over the last thirty years and much of it consists of getting lost, finding my way again, getting lost again, finding my way again, and so it goes… again and again.

I used to think I would arrive at some point where I finally found it or did it or became it and I don’t know if I ever really knew what it was, but I knew it didn’t involve getting lost and having to ask for help. To finally arrive meant I no longer needed help and I would have thought that by the time I reached thirty I would no longer need help, with anything really.

I don’t know why I thought this, I don’t know if someone told me this along the way or if I just conjured it up in my head all those times I played “journey” as a kid. Yes, while most other girls played house, making tea and cleaning for their pretend husbands and babies, my sister and I were playing “journey.” We would pack our bags with blankets and apples, along with markers and paper to make maps and together we would pretend we were run-aways or adventurers going on a long journey, never actually arriving to our destination. The game was all about the journey and what happened along the way, it was never about arriving to a certain spot because we never actually arrived to a certain spot, unless dinner was ready then we would arrive home for dinner, but in the game there was no arriving. We would set up camp in a tree for a short while, long enough to snack on an apple, check our maps and catch our breath, but always we continued on our way through the “mountains” of our surrounding neighborhood. For the record, there were no actual mountains, just the imagination being played out on the flat coastline of South Carolina.

The beautiful and sad thing about the imagination of a child is that at some point you grow up, and at some point you start hearing the voices that tell you you need to grow up, you need to succeed, you need to accomplish, you need to arrive. I don’t know at what age I realized that it seemed more important to arrive somewhere than it did to journey somewhere, but my guess would be middle school. I think anybody who has made it through middle school has a right to blame a lot of their issues on middle school. I think Flannery O’Connor said something to that effect, but I can’t be so sure as to quote her verbatim.

I’m not blaming middle school for my getting lost time and time again, there comes a time in life when the same old excuse loses its validity as an excuse at all; I’m just citing middle school as a possible starting point for thinking the day would come when I would finally arrive, even if I hesitated to arrive at all.

I love road trips, I have always loved road trips, and most of what I love about them, if not all of what I love about them, is the road itself, the state of being in which you are constantly on a journey. Whether I am merely heading to the grocery store, a friend’s house or a national park I have yet to see, there is always the slightest bit of disappointment upon the arrival, not because I don’t want to be there, but because the journey has in some way come to an end. I look back and it makes sense to me that I played “journey” as a kid instead of “house,” I never wanted to be still, I never wanted to settle down, I never wanted to arrive, I just wanted to journey.

At thirty years old, I still have yet to arrive, and perhaps this is what I have come to accept about life, that while there is a time for everything, even being still, life in and of itself is a journey, and we will never actually arrive on this side of eternity. For a restless heart like mine, I take great peace in knowing that I am not expected to arrive, at least not to a state of perfection, of having it all figured out, of knowing it all, applying it all and being it all. On this side of eternity I am already who I always wanted to be, a sojourner. Perhaps I was on to something as a kid and I forgot along the way as I grew up and sought out perfection instead of character.

I have made a lot of mistakes in the last few years, some the result of an intentional poor choice and some not at all, some I wasn’t even aware were mistakes until I took a second to look back and notice the wreckage. I say that to say I’ve messed up, time and time again, mostly because I have been trying so hard to finally arrive instead of slowing down enough to take part in the journey. I’ve been racing to a finish line that I don’t even necessarily want to get to because it’s not only unrealistic, it’s lonely. Nobody is perfect and so even if I did by some bizarre, unnatural twist of fate reach that goal of perfection, I can guarantee you that I would be there alone, and alone in this world is not somewhere I want to be, not a place I want to arrive.

I cannot undo things that have been done in the past any more than I can take back words that have been spoken. I can only own my part in the damage I have done, seek forgiveness where it needs to be sought and move forward from here, finding my way yet again on this journey of life, reminding myself that you are never too old to ask for help.

My job is coming to an end this month and a new journey is beginning. I am a mix of nerves and excitement, peace and chaos, confusion and clarity, dark and light, dust and divine breath.

My plan, my hope, my prayer is to write more in an effort to live more. I feel most alive when I am writing and mainly because it means I have actually been living, which is where my best writing material comes from… life. If writing is evidence of life then last year looked a lot more like death than life. You don’t have to look much further than my Tumblr archive to see what I mean. You will find pretty pictures of sandwiches that look like animals and vegan desserts made from twigs and berries, but you won’t find much past that. You won’t find many stories about life, about people, about hope and redemption, about grace and forgiveness. You will find bright colors and perfectly positioned subject matters, but you won’t find any warmth or any subjects that actually matter (save the few faces of some adorable kids, those faces matter).

Perhaps a blog is a lame place to start, but I am lame and in need of a new start, and so I am starting in the best way I know how, with writing, even if just on this blog. I am taking a baby step in a new direction on this long journey of life, extending grace to myself when I lose my way and grace to others when they lose theirs. After all, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together.

Traveling mercies, seventy times seven, grace upon grace,

jennie joy