Emerging.

Hello, gentle readers. You may (or may not) have noticed my absence from the write-o-sphere the past few weeks.

As happens with me from time to time, I got hit by a massive wave of doubt a few weeks back. Doubt about myself, about why I bother to write, about what the point is, after all. Worry that I wasn't being true to myself, that my voice was fake and forced, that I was losing focus, that there was no point in trying to focus in the first place... blah blah blah.

Work got busy and it was easier just to close up my "notebook" and put it away, turning to the more pressing and tangible concerns of owning a business.

But of course, as always happens, the act of writing beckoned me back.

I'm still not sure why I do this, or what I'm trying to prove. Some days I think I might be a source of light in the world. Sometimes the world seems so dark, I don't see how my dim bulb could make any difference. Some days I believe I can rely on a higher power to light the path. Sometimes, I can't believe that such a thing can possibly exist.

These weeks, I've been struggling with issues of faith and purpose. I've raged inside -- how can a world so broken and full of pain hold any hope inside of it at all?

This week I went on a business trip to the Midwest. To a "flyover state," as it were. It wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't pretty. I wasn't expecting refreshment, I wasn't expecting inspiration, I wasn't expecting hope.

Yet, in my travels, hope managed to find me, and it came to me through chance meetings with ordinary people who were really not ordinary at all. As I sat (or stood) next to strangers in cabs, on planes, on airport shuttles and the ATL "plane train," I saw a common theme emerge. These people had stories. They all had lights inside them, little flames of hope. They had dreams they were holding onto for dear life, people they cherished and missed, hobbies and passions that made them catch on fire on the inside. Each person carried a little, dancing, blue flame of wonder.

One of the things that got me down a few weeks ago was reading a comment on a message board. It was in response to a birth story on a parenting community I follow. Someone responded: "I hate stories like this. What self-absorbed bullshit," and went on to say how recounting the events around a birth like this mother had done was pointless and silly.

Oh my gosh, I thought. Is that true? Is sharing the moments of your life, even those as profound as the birth of a child, just stupid? Does anybody really care? Probably not, I concluded, probably not.  Nobody cares, Sara. Shut your piehole.

Three weeks later, I'm ready to say, "Nope, not buying it." Everyone I bothered to talk with on my trip had something valuable to share. If you're asking people what makes their heart soar, and the answers you're getting back aren't giving you a sense of wonder and amazement, then maybe there's something wrong with your internal wonder-meter.

I believe - most days anyway - that God created and inhabits a universe that is vast and amazing. We see a little bit of its wonder in our natural world. And it seems to me that some of it is folded up small inside each and every one of us, and all we have to do is ask kindly and listen openly in order to see it shine through.