Inside A Writer's Mind

I'm listening to this insightful podcast and the two men are talking about the healing quality of words and that they have power to mend and that writers are their own special breed and that the world needs more of them. Needs more voices expressing what we all feel and think but can't find the way to say. Needs more people speaking their stories and telling us it's going to be okay. 

One of them talks about how it's as if writers open their veins and bleed and we all read. He says he makes sense of his life by writing it down - that if he couldn't write he couldn't think. And maybe writing gives clarity and voice to the things we can't say if we tried to talk. And now I'm inspired and suddenly feeling most understood because this...this is why I type keys and feel the therapy flow. 

When I sit down to write a post, it's as if I am about to give birth - a labor of love and intensity and feeling being poured out in words as I try to express things pent up inside...pressing to be set free and given voice. I felt a deep resonating when the guest on the podcast said he often doesn't know what he's going to exactly say when he starts typing on his computer. I don't often either. It likely will surprise my readers to know that basically, all I begin with is a germ of an idea and then I sit in the silence of my home and ask God what He wants to say. The sentences flow as I go and I move with His rhythm and then I finish and feel the satisfaction of a thought well said. 

Being a writer is often hard because sometimes people don't think we're as fun as we ought to be - that the world we live in is too emotional, too serious, too deep. We can be quite introverted and seemingly detached because we are easily lost in thought. Everything in the world has hidden meanings and we hear storylines in our heads behind everything we are experiencing externally. Because to us, all of life is story and we're all part of His story and the more in touch with story the world can be, the more understood we all are. That's how we look at it. But this often means we are mis-read and mis-understood. Seen as individualist and removed when all we're doing is taking in our surroundings and preparing to birth a new idea. Because for those who pen their thoughts, there is a lesson to be found in everything. 

Scientists and medical experts are discovering new evidence that getting in touch with your inner life story is perhaps the key to finding the meaning out of life's seeming randomness, pain, and senseless situations. They're calling it narrative therapy. And more counselors are seeing its benefits as people are encouraged to own the story of their life and fit it into a greater whole. And for all those who believe God as the ultimate Author, this perspective suddenly gives deeper understanding to what we experience in this life. 

More and more psychology and counseling methods include encouraging the client to keep a journal or a diary of their emotional journey, sharing how they feel and what they're thinking - allowing them thus to track their progression through their pain and be able to remember what they're taking out of it as they learn. Words are being given a greater space because every human life is its own special tale and we all read one another's story in some way and the more we do, the more we find we're all alike more than we admit. Because all our stories are humanity's story and fall into the big story of Him and what He's doing in the world. 

As unique as books on a shelf, each one of us is their own particular narrative, contrived in the heart and mind of God before time began. Some of our tales are filled with great adventure, while others are filled with quiet acts of meaning. Some seem to carry continuous drama and others, peaceful and holy substance. Some are packed with tremendous pain and their purpose is to show how faith can be sustained in the worst of times, while some are testimonies to great victory and achievement. Over the years, I've had to read a lot of other people's stories in order to learn to tell mine. I've had to plumb the depths of others' sorrow and struggle before I could begin to come to terms with my own.  While I'm still on the hunt for purpose to all I've been through and continuing to seek the experience of those whose stories have showed me the way, my fascination and love of story and the human condition has remained constant, and I have slowly come to accept that if my story is one of the ones in which God tells of triumph through tragedy, then so be it. 

For years I didn't want my story to be opened because I was afraid of what others would think when they began to scan its pages. Perhaps they'd find it too hard to read. I still fight this lie when I sit to post sometimes because I don't what all this to be about me and how hard my struggle is but rather about how good God is in the midst. I don't write to gain sympathy from people, and I don't put my ideas out there inviting others to fix how I feel. I write because I hope my voice gives you the grace and strength to find your own...to come to terms with your personal story and to maybe find hope because somebody has traveled the same road as you. After all, as author Henri Nouwen once remarked, "One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see." 

Someday, your story may be the launching point for the telling of somebody else's. Whatever your story is, it is a beautiful one. If it's the happy-beautiful or the ugly-beautiful, there is grace to be found in every line. If it's one of great success or great failure, God loves you the same and sees your story as valuable. In His eyes, your story is exactly as He intended it to be. And the more you embrace the plot twists, the more hope you'll find.