Laura Smith Writer

How Can I Serve God?

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The actual process of looking for a “job”  in a way  severs the connection with my God. I am seeking a way to make money, to gain a reward and when I think of it in these terms I lose track of the real reason why I need to work. I need to serve God. I need to use what skills I have in order to make a difference in the world, in order to spread compassion and dispel fear. How best can I do that, and what is my purpose on this orbiting sphere. You would think that at 38 I would be clear about my future. I have the Liberal Arts degree in hand and goals, plenty of goals. I do however remember watching Good Will Hunting and lamenting the fact that I don’t have a clear genius, that I am an average gal, I write well sometimes, I am told I am friendly and put people at ease, I read voraciously, but even as a child I didn’t have the genius for one particular area, I wasn’t a star. I am not Meryl Streep or Bill Gates. I didn’t always dream of becoming a lawyer, firefighter or podiatrist. I love books, I love reading, I love writing, I love creating and looking at really old, beautifully decorated books. I want to die in the Beineke Library at Yale University. I love Dante and Chaucer and Boccacio and the way the Italian language rolls off my tongue. I love the sound of the keys when I type and I hold a notebook as a security blanket. This all doesn’t translate into a rent-paying career. Or does it? I have my motives mixed up, I have been coming from a place of fear, fear of losing my apartment and car, fear of asking for help and fear of not knowing what the next step is. I think I know, but then I find out I don’t. The key word here being “I.” Dear God, please help me to know how best to live in accordance with your will for me. Help me to get out of my own way, help me to stop trying to work toward the end result and savor the process of discovering the person I am. Amen. 

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● About Me

I wrote and published my first blog post on May 26, 2009. I was about to turn 36 and had been accepted to Mount Holyoke College as a non-traditional student, on my way to completing a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Medieval Studies. I had managed, finally, to know what general direction I was traveling. As a self proclaimed voracious reader I knew that I needed a vocation that would allow me to engage daily with words: reading words, writing words, and hearing words. I also needed to eat, so I navigated my way to a teaching position and I began to fine tune my craft. I love to teach and I love my students, but I also needed to continue to hone my own literary technique, voice, and style. I continued my education in order to delve deeper into literature, making connections, and most definitely, writing. I gained more confidence as a reader as well as a writer of both creative and analytical text. That first blog post in 2009 is short, the writing average, and the topic mundane, but as I continued to learn from other writers I began to understand that to become a better writer I needed to write more. Each time I write and release a poem, a post, or a story, I hone my skills. I invite you along for the ride, for this journey of mine as I attempt to wrangle a wealth of ideas and competing directions into an organized freshly paved path to publication. I might get distracted along the way, but sometimes those detours lead us to amazing views and new friends. 

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