May 18th, 2008
If you had to choose
Sacrifice. The word is laden with inntonations of things taken to an extreme measure. Yes, it’s about giving up something for something else, but it’s more than that, isn’t it? At a retreat a few years back I participated in a values setting exercise where we were asked to parcel a list of 50 values down to 10. As the activity progressed the list narrowed further and further until we were left with just two. Finally we had to pick our top value. I looked down at the two words left on my page and felt sick to my stomach. Shaking with rage and fear, I was reacting as if I were really being forced to decide which value to keep and which to toss. Intimacy and creativity. These were what I was down to. I had crossed out health, knowledge, family and more. When it was my turn to speak I looked up at my fellow retreat attendees, embarrased that I had tears streaming down my face, I said that I felt like I was being forced to choose between my husband and my writing. It was in that soulful moment that the ephiphany arrived — I am a romance writer. The two things that matter more to me than all others are love and writing. They are the two things I will never sacrifice.
