Crying Lady

We cry for different reasons. One would be over regrets. Had we been braver, more daring, more rash, we think we could have gone to the place where our heart was set on going.

This was exactly what a little old lady, her eyes moist, told me.  

 

She was one of the 400+ people in the audience when I spoke about “What it takes to be a winner.” I narrated how much I had always dreamed of being a writer, but the snags and detours I took were far too many, till I got here late in life.

“Eighteen years later, today,” I stressed, “I have written 54 books—with 15 awards and 15 rejected manuscripts. One rejection letter said, ‘Do not attempt to rewrite and re-submit.’ I have failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I keep writing.”

She waited to talk to me, sitting alone with her teen-aged grandson watching her from a distance. She rose to hug me, very tightly, and whispered, “That was beautiful.  I, too, had always dreamed of being a writer but never got published.”

“It isn’t too late,” I assured her. “Send me one of your manuscripts and I’ll see what I can do.” I was thinking of publishing it online—on my blogsite—right away.

“But they are all handwritten, and they are all the copies I have.”

“You can ask your grandson to either photocopy one or type it and send to me via e-mail,”

“What is e-mail?” she wrinkled her ash-gray brows.

Dreams can be overtaken by time and technology. And only if we let them remain in the past can we be content with where we are.  I had unwittingly unearthed a passion she had kept in her heart all these years; I did not mean to.

“Being published isn’t the be-all and end-all of writers,” I explained. "We write because we love to and enjoy it. Other people need not read the words from our heart. But you could leave those pieces as a legacy to your grandchildren.”

We hugged one more time, and as she walked slowly away, I remembered Moses. He expected to step into the Promised Land, but the Lord thwarted that thought, “Because you did not trust me enough to demonstrate my holiness to the people of Israel, you will not lead them into the land I am giving them!” (Numbers 20:12)

I am not drawing a parallelism between the old lady and Moses.  I simply mean, we don’t know why some dreams are fulfilled and some aren’t, even if we work hard toward achieving them.  And it is not wise to question “why?”

We just need to keep the faith and lean on His grace.