These past few weeks have turned us all upside down.

One quick turn, one unexpected surgery, and one injured husband later and I can barely see straight. We’ve been up all night, setting alarms for wee hours to maintain precious windows of pain relief. I’ve lifted and hauled. He’s fought and endured. Every movement is a full team effort – his stoicism and my patience in a constant give and take of grace.

Somewhere between the narcotics and the sleep deprivation, raw to the world in a way that only unexpected mercy can make me, I’ve gotten the itch to write again. First it was dreams of books unwritten and windows of recovery in which to write them. Then it was twitching fingers and fledgling sentences pieced together as the sun rose.

I woke up this morning after another fitful night, albeit our best night yet, with a very simple realization: maybe I don’t have to have all the words.

I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life to be somebody else. Somebody with more poise, somebody with more grace. Somebody with more responsibility and less ambiguity. But mostly somebody with all the right words, somebody capable of crafting something from nothing and leaving speechless the gracious reader. As I slip slowly toward most of that manifestation of my own self – call it destiny, call it a dream unfurled – I notice now how poorly the waiting has served me, really.

Because that one thing, that big dream to be a writer, it’s never going to happen over night. None of the rest of it did. I was born a lucky girl with doors flung open and opportunities unbounded, I know that. But from that pedestal I can say with confidence that I have fought hard for what we’ve created, together. There have been dark years and long nights and easy blessings and calloused hands. And then with one quick turn we’re back where we started, in the trenches, enduring together all over again.

It seems to me that only from there, from the weary eyes of sleep-deprived dreamer can I see how little I’ve done to achieve the one thing I’ve so long wanted. To be a writer. I’ve been waiting for all the right words, rather than weaving with what I’ve got on hand.

Today I woke up tired of waiting. Today I decided it was time to try harder.

These past few weeks have turned us all upside down. The view is so different from down here.