When my youngest son was about six months old I wrote my first song. It was terrible, but I meant well. It was about Pride & Prejudice. I liked it so much that I wrote another song to see if I could do any better.
I kid you not, that when I first started writing songs eight years ago, it was like a floodgate opening. I was writing three and four and five songs a day because I just couldn't stop. Some of them were half songs, some of them were just choruses or guitar licks and I've forgotten all of it. That's a good thing. I'd say it took me probably four or five months to get a handle on what the hell I was doing before I was able to spend any real time on a piece or do anything to it or keep it long enough to remember it a week later. Weird times.
This is what I do remember. I remember that ever since writing that first song, I've been terrified that one day the songwriting might disappear. I was so scared that if I wasn't writing all the time that somehow this new found home would vanish and I'd be left orphaned without the words and the lines I'd fallen in love with.
Part of me is still scared that it will disappear so I keep writing as assurance that I can still do it. Newsflash: life keeps moving and changing and so do we. Tomorrow is not our property and it's not in our control. The boys are growing up, the years are flying by and what else is there to do, but rejoice in the present goodness that is ours? Should we fear losing something we love so much that we do not cherish it in the moment? By no means! There will come a day when I write my last song, but I'm not going to despair before it even gets here!
Songwriters are notorious for loving and hating songwriting at the same time. Most of the time I love it. Even the hard parts are a gift (until I hate them again). People can be notorious for loving and loathing at the same time too. Our job has always been to do the work set before us, to love the people we have been given to love, and to remember that we are in good hands. We are in God's hands. We write what we can write today and we don't waste time worrying about days that are yet to come. For now we work, we love, we do what we can and we keep on writing.