Today I planned to tell you about my free Spanish class (a wonderful benefit of working at a university) that begins tomorrow. I prepared to describe the huge emotional barrier I’d vaulted over, finally becoming willing to take this step. Maybe I’d even draw a spiritual analogy from overcoming my fear that another Romance language would erase the long-strived-for and cherished Romanian words from my conscious mind. The joy of surprising my bilingual granddaughters’ faces when I could “habla Español” with them supplanted my fear.

But I won’t tell you that now. Not enough students signed up. The door closed and the Spanish class was cancelled.

And that opened up an even bigger new world to me. It all began with a crazy idea that started germinating only two weeks ago.

Starting tomorrow, I will take my first class in my new degree program, the Master of Arts in Writing! It’s only been 33 years since I first entertained thoughts of graduate school, thoughts that were quickly drowned out by a too-busy ministry lifestyle.

And I refuse to say how many years since I spent every Sunday afternoon perched on my picnic table overlooking the Choptank River, notebook in hand, lost in the fantasy world I created. As a child, my answer to “What do you want to be when you grow up?” was always “A writer!”

The class is about Developing the Creative. It will be held on our extension campus in gorgeous Asheville. The variety it’ll provide me with a change-of-scenery (and what scenery!) will surely help develop my creative. I’ll spend one day a week in the mountains, helping out at our office there and studying in the city that beckoned Thomas Wolfe, O. Henry, Carl Sandburg, and F. Scott Fitzgerald to come write.

And I’ll be home before the Cru meetings I go to during the school year would have even started. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone off the deep end this time. I mean, I’m always complaining about not having any free time as it is. And I may never actually get a degree – let’s face it, I’ll be pretty old at the slow rate of one class per semester – but it’ll sure be fun to work towards one. I also should merge seamlessly from receiving student discounts to senior ones, never paying full-price again.

Life is all about story. My window is wide open to a world of possibilities to tell more stories and tell them better. Hopefully those stories will point to the Larger Story that gives meaning to eveything else in my life.