Jenny Knipfer–Author

It’s been so long since I blogged for the joy of it, it makes me anxious thinking about doing it. But here I am, blogging anyway, because I’m a writer. This shouldn’t be hard or feel awkward, but it does.

Perhaps I have nothing worth saying anymore. Nothing motivational. Certainly nothing great. Though most of my days stretch wide open for writing, I barely get any done, in my work in progress or here in cyberspace. 

That makes me sad, makes me grieve, because multiple sclerosis has hacked at my writing like it has every other creative pursuit I’ve ever engaged in. My days are so filled with battling fatigue and pain that I have little energy to give to anything else, to say nothing of my decreased strength, sensation, and dexterity, making life increasingly challenging.  

Not long ago, I pulled out my beading stuff to make some bookmarks. After multiple failed attempts to form a simple wire loop and string on a bead, I gave up. I think the door has firmly closed on my bead-craft days. Sigh…

A few days ago, on a whim and to see if I could, I picked up a ball of smoky turquoise yarn and started on a simple crochet stitch with the goal of a scarf in mind. A foam handle attached to the crochet hook helped my more disabled hand hold on to it, but I hadn’t foreseen that I could not keep my left pointer finger, on my better hand, erect to hold up the yarn. It kept falling down, which made me drop the yarn, and with every other stitch I had to rethread the yarn through my fingers again. After fifteen minutes of that I gave up.

Last year, I downsized my crafty space from a whole room to a corner of a room. Today, I fondly gaze at my craft corner in my living room and face the fact that I can no longer do any of it with any sort of proficiency. Mostly, I just get frustrated when I attempt to travel down the once well-worn crafty path. 

What will I do if I can’t create anymore? What will happen when I write “The End” in a novel for the last time? I don’t know. It sounds like death to me. Death to everything familiar, everything I enjoy or have enjoyed doing.

I sigh, take a deep breath, pray, and listen to bravery calling to me on the other side of the ravine where every creative pursuit I once loved is buried. Do I explore, cross over the past or soon-to-be-past into the future of the unknown? When there’s no other choice, I suppose I’ll have to. The lack of choice never fails to pry us from our well-loved joys and comforts. Just thinking about the loss makes me want to have a proper tantrum, worthy of a two-year-old, but it won’t do me any good. 

So, I’ll lay aside, give away, or gracefully depart from what craft I can no longer do and make a crafty end of it. From this vantage point, the future for my very creative soul looks rather like a black hole, but I must have some faith that my days ahead will be filled with other joys I have not tasted yet. 

Please, God let it be so.