Rainy Day Drama and Deep Breathing

a writing prompt for you + December Writing Hour

Welcome to Writing in Company. Each week I share some words and a writing prompt, meant to be jumping-off points for you to write about what matters. Use the prompts however you like—to journal, to draft thoughts for your own writing project, as meditation or prayer ideas, or for another creative endeavor. You can always look back through the archive for more ideas. Grab your pen and paper, and let your words loose on the page.

I was almost there. My GPS told me I had 10 minutes left in my early-morning rainy trip down the interstate to lead a writing workshop. I’d been invited back to a former church to help them write about hoping and dreaming with the prophet Isaiah during Advent. The record-setting rain and roadwork made everything look slightly off on what used to be familiar roads.

Sudden warning lights flashed on. Check engine. Hybrid system warning.

I’m almost there, I thought. I can make it.

Then I realized the car was beeping at me. And I was losing speed and the ability to steer. I drifted across three lanes and came to a stop on a slim shoulder by a guardrail. On an overpass. On the interstate. In the rain.

I turned on my hazard lights and sat there for a few minutes, fumbling for the owner’s manual in the glovebox to check this particular warning.

Immediately stop the vehicle in a safe place and contact your Toyota Dealer.

With 50 minutes to go before class, I texted my colleague at the church. Maybe I can still make it.

Hope abounds! They texted back.

My new AAA card had come in the mail a few days before. I dialed the number.

An automated voice said: Welcome to AAA. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911. Are you in a safe location?

Not an emergency, I thought. But was I safe? This is the kind of existential question I could spend a good bit of time ruminating on. It would make a good writing prompt, too: What is safe? In a world where bombs are hurled across borders, I was safe. But cars were roaring past me with inches to spare in the rain. That didn’t feel especially safe.

Yes, I said into my phone. And willed it to be so.

AAA texted me a link to follow up with a service request. On the little map it showed me down below the overpass and on a side street. I typed in where I thought I was in the notes and waited for a call back.

Texting with church contacts, I had multiple offers for rescue and declined them all. There was no safe way for someone to pick me up. When AAA called, I asked the dispatcher if the tow driver could drop me off at a nearby church while they took my car somewhere else.

Ma’am, you have to stay with your vehicle. We can’t take you to church.

Sadly admitting defeat, I sent my resilient colleague some writing prompt ideas and steeled myself to wait, praying for alert drivers to avoid sliding into me. I considered getting out of the car and standing further away from it. But it was pouring, and my finely-honed generational gift of disaster-scenario-thinking told me that I would be more distracting to drivers standing forlornly in the rain than I was in my car, which at least offered some protection.

I practiced some deep breathing and every trick I knew to reduce anxiety.

I often tell writing workshop participants to focus on the present. What is right in front of you? Write about what you can see, hear, smell, taste, touch. This can help ground us and calm us, even while it helps our writing. But how do you focus on your senses when your present circumstances are frustrating, frightening, or unsafe, and all your brain can do is skip around with anxiety? And what if your present is more difficult than a highway overpass in the rain?

Isaiah has something to say about it.

In the Advent texts I was planning to use in my class, the prophet writes to people far from home. They are deep into decades of captivity and exile. Everything has changed, and not for the better. He speaks to those in a state of worry and wilderness saying:

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.

A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. —Isaiah 40:1, 3-4

and this:

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy and its people as a delight. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it or the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime… —Isaiah 65:17-20a

With Isaiah in Advent, we sit squarely in a rotten present. But we turn to look back at God’s faithfulness in the past, and then forward to the promises of God for the future. The present is always bound up together with the past and the future. Isaiah cries out “no more shall there be…” remembering back on all our losses and our griefs, and looking forward to a day when loss and weeping shall be no more. He promises that all the rainy overpasses we’ve ever been broken down upon will be like smooth wide roads to the very heart of God. This is how we find comfort in the present, no matter what else it sounds, looks, or feels like right now. Isaiah’s is the clear voice of one who cries out over the loud violence of news cycles, death notices, climate crises, and all the clanging alarm bells that clamor for our attention. I am praying that you, and so many others are holding on to Isaiah’s stubborn hope in these days.

Staying in the present like Isaiah—a present that looks back with clear eyes and forward with persistent hope—is how we hold on as we weep over lost infants and old people and Israelis and Palestinians and Ukrainians and Russians and everyone—everyone—else. It’s even how we sit on the side of a rainy road, praying and breathing and trusting in God’s attentiveness to our needs. Because God has been faithful in the past. And when pesky car trouble or a much deeper disaster has struck, God promises to walk with us into a future where we have not been left alone or forgotten. Stay present. Keep breathing. Keep hoping.

When my PTSD about my recent trip recedes, I’ll be left with the memories of God’s faithfulness in the form of other people. Like a tow truck driver named D’Angelo who risked his life on a rainy highway for me. Like a colleague who pinch-hits beautifully. Like a friend who skipped church to pick me up at the car dealership and take me back to my old church where another friend took me to lunch, and then the one I love most of all took hours out of their busy week to drive (still in the rain) to pick me up, then take me back, then follow me home the next day.

Hope abounds, no matter what. Thanks be to God.

a writing prompt

What helps you calm yourself when your present circumstances feel precarious? What do Isaiah’s words of hope say to you?

You might also try the 5-4-3-2-1 prompt I often use in workshops, which helps with anxiety, and also gets our writing going. Use it as a writing prompt, or just a grounding mindfulness technique whenever you need it.

Notice around you right now:

• 5 things you can see

• 4 things you can touch

• 3 things you can hear

• 2 things you can smell

• 1 thing you can taste

If you are writing, pick one item from the list, and write more about it.

Note: I’m taking the next couple of weeks off from the newsletter prompt business to focus on family. I’ll see you back here in the new year. Keep writing! Holiday blessings to you all.

December Writing Hour - Saturday, December 30, 4 pm Eastern

My next live writing hour on Zoom for paid subscribers is two Saturdays from now at 4 pm Eastern. If you want to write in company with others, you are welcome to join us. You can upgrade your subscription for a month ($7) just to try it. A separate email to paid subscribers will go out with the link, or you can find it on my Substack tab called Writing Hours. Let’s write together.

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