the truest sentence you know

i asked K to remind me to write today. it won't just happen on its own. there is prayer, and there is faith, but there is also faithfulness, which is work. i mean to have some discipline.

she reminded me. she cheered for me. i sat down to work in the sun room.

it has been raining for days--a nuisance and a miracle, in this part of the world. the hills look like mountains, when it's raining. it makes a voyage out of going to work at six in the morning, so that it's almost a pleasure.

the sun room is full of tobacco-stained light. the couch is full of pillows and a blanket. fresh off the impetus of K's cheering, i stand in the doorway and think, "how did i get here?" i don't understand.

ernest hemingway said that the cure for writer's block is to write the truest sentence you know. but i have never yet found that sentence. does that mean that i don't know what i believe? how upsetting--i might have writer's block forever.

after an hour or so, as i stared at the retarded grunts i had accomplished, shades fell over my mind. i went to sleep.

i woke up feeling as if years had passed. i woke up staring at my Bible. and i thought, "i need to understand." i can't write until i do understand. i'm going on strike.

there's a verse i read a few months ago in jeremiah that says "let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows me."

writing is the most boastful activity that i know. i'm pretty sure that is why i don't tell people who i am--i feel that i don't deserve it. and i don't understand anything.

i pulled myself off the couch. in the other room, K is sleeping on the other couch. her hair is splayed across the pillow. last night she went to the emergency room, one more time. i don't understand. i shake my fist, though timidly, at God. i don't understand. and i need to. i can't write fiction until i start understanding something about life. this isn't a strike. it's a handicap. i'm crippled, so it doesn't matter if i want to get across the room or across the world.

i've found the truest sentence i know. but it hasn't cured anything except my ambition.