God holds a Cattle Prod?

Headache+Excedrin=Late Night. I'm not on the internet blogging at this hour because I want to be:) Rather, I've been forced into it, but for your sake I shall try to make the best of it.

My life, for the last several weeks, has been in a state of, shall we say, steady upheaval. I'm not going to go into details, because they don't matter. What I will say is that for some reason God decided to send yours truly into a severe state of system shock. That's not what I'm writing about though--I spent all last year sounding whiny, and I don't want to do that again this year. What I am writing about is how sometimes difficult/traumatic/confusing experiences redefine us; they can help us see the world in new ways (for better or worse), and sometimes they work as cattle prods, giving us an electric jolt to our hindquarters which motivates us to move forward.

As a writer, I've been severely lacking in motivation since April of last year. I don't know why. Part of it was dealing with some minor writer's block. But really, I could have worked through it with a little bit of effort. That's the problem with motivation though, if you don't have it, you can't put forth effort. So, for the last eight months or so, I've made very little effort to pursue my self proclaimed career path.

Somehow, recent events have shaken me from this state of apathy. I don't even know how it happened, one week I was not writing, and the next week I was. A lot. For a sense of comparison, in the past week, I have written more than I had in the previous NINE MONTHS. That's a pretty good turnaround.

It still eludes me, why I was able to convert events of the last few weeks into writing motivation. It doesn't make sense, really. I've had similar experiences in the past and none of them turned me into a productive writer. Why now?

I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with this train of thought. Perhaps all I'm trying to say is that God moves in mysterious ways. Or maybe He moves in very simple ways, encouraging us until He's sure we're not responding, then giving us the cattle prod.

I don't like the cattle prod, but I am writing again. . . .

*the picture is from a Japanese Anime called Ah! My Goddess. In case you didn't catch the reason I added it to this post it's because. . .well, I just wanted to add a picture (and I like Belldandy, thankyouverymuch!).