The frame was one of several things we brought home from my mother's house after she was gone. She had several framed paintings, most painted by my grandmother, Mamie Borgen. She also had several unframed paintings, rolled up together, along with this empty frame.
Uncertain whether any of the rolled up paintings would fit this frame or be suitable for hanging, my wife hung the empty frame on the wall in my office. Her intent was that it should remind us to figure out what to put in the frame.
As things tend to go, we put off actually doing anything more with it.
After several weeks, my wife asked me if I wanted her to take the frame off the wall and store it away. I declined her offer and told her I like it just the way it is.
The frame hangs on a wall just across from my writing desk. Every time I'm writing and start to wool-gather or look around the room in the throes of wither writer's block or just plain old lack of motivation, my eyes always fall on the empty frame.
And it reminds me that it's up me to fill the frame.
I'm not a painter but I am a writer. I'm not trying to put a picture into a wooden frame, but I am trying to fill in the details on whatever manuscript I'm working on.
As a magazine writer, my work mostly begins with queries. The editor publishes a list of the themes and topics for the upcoming year or quarter, and writers send in queries - ideas for articles. I spend as much time thinking up ideas and writing queries as I do writing the actual articles. I have to spend some time thinking and researching, brainstorming for an idea. Then I have to flesh it out into enough of an outline or synopsis so that I know I can actually turn it into 1,000-2,00 words, and also enough to convince the editor to give me a go-ahead.
Because I'm trying to come up with ideas for between 150 and 200 issues each year, I will confess that some of the ideas I send of as queries are less well-developed than others. Many of these fall into two categories, at opposite ends of the spectrum. There's the "well this is boring, but it just might be the sort of just-the-facts-ma'am treatment of the topic they want" idea. Then there's the "this is really odd and quirky, but maybe it'll grab their attention" idea.
Invariably, my editors will give the go-ahead to several of those queries. And when I read the e-mail that tells me to go ahead and write the story and send it to them, my response is always, "Oh great. Now I have to figure out how to write that thing."
This is when I look at the frame on my wall and remember that my job is to fill in the picture. The idea is the frame; not I have to fill it in, detail by detail. And so I set to work trying to not only string together enough relevant words to meet the assigned length, but to somehow make the story come alive.
When I've finished an article and read it through the last time before sending it off to the editor, there's always a warm feeling of having brought something to life. I've learned that my joy is greater in sending off the finished work than it is in seeing the article in print, something an aspiring writer never expects.
Faith is also like an empty frame.
Every new believer has some idea of what Christianity is about, but it takes awhile to figure out what goes in the middle.
Some write a story that puts Self at the center. Christianity is all about what God can do for me, how it makes me feel.
Others write a story about their place in a comfortable Christian family or church or job. Christianity becomes about the lifestyle of being a Christian.
The Gospel, though, is Good News about Jesus. The old, old story is about Jesus and His love, how he lived and died and is still active in the world today through His people.
If I put Jesus in the middle of the picture frame, make sure He stays as the author and finisher of my faith, then filling in the middle becomes easier. It's up to me to step into His story and merge my story into his story.
Joy comes daily as I walk by faith, keeping in step with Jesus, making His story come alive in me daily life.
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