An Epiphany

My parents bought me a laptop when I was in elementary school specifically because they wanted me to have a place to write, or at least that's what they told me. I believe it was more because they were tired of me junking up the PC with stereotypical elementary school girl poems and melodramatic lyrics that sounded too much like Jessie McCartney songs. Before discovering computers, though, I kept diaries. I remember coming home from school every day, grabbing one of my many journals, and rehashing my day onto its pages. I told those journals everything that I didn't, or couldn't, tell the people involved in my stories. Those journals hold the angry pen marks of a young girl who was made to sit in the hallway for talking too much in class, even though she had something really good to say. They hold the excited and nervous rambling of a girl who was invited to the birthday party of the boy in her class she had a crush on, and who she knew for a fact had a crush on her. They hold the tear stains of a humiliated girl who was yelled at by a lunch room lady for dropping her fork, even if it was a complete accident. In those journals are parts of my life that I do not care to remember, and parts that I never want to forget.

The point is, I've been writing for as long as I can remember. I love being able to create something from nothing. I love staring at a blank page or Word document and filling it with life. There is so much beauty, so much magic, in the creation of stories, and I love being a part of that process. But there is so much more to writing than just writing.

Later on in my life, in middle or high school, toward the end of the school year when the weather was getting warm enough to wear shorts, I would find myself tip-toeing barefoot to my back porch with a cheap spiral notebook and pen in hand. I loved to go outside right when the sun began to set and look at its effect on everything surrounding me. I noted how the water in my pool looked when the light slanted across it. I found solace in the intermittent waving of the trees and the shouting of my neighbors' children. On those evenings, I would write, describing everything I heard, everything I felt, and everything I saw. I loved the way the pen felt as it glided across the paper. I'd close my eyes and wait for the words. They were never forced. On those evenings, my thoughts about life stumbled out onto the notebook paper with ease. And on those evenings, I saw God between the lines of the pages in my ninety-nine cents spiral notebook.

Discovering that writing could be a spiritual experience was a transformational realization for me. Writing up until that point had been very physical. It was about making the intangible tangible. What I didn't know was that by making my thoughts tangible, I was changing what was inside of me. Writing was causing me to look, really look, at life, and through that my spirit grew stronger. Today, my playwriting professor talked about creating space with our writing. She said it was important to give space for characters to mature and grow on their own, to allow them to develop into their own beings. But she also said it was important to give space for the Holy Spirit to work. I don't think a lot of people understand how important that is. Writing can never be just writing. It is always so much more than that; it is a calling and an understanding that our words are instruments for God to use in order to affect the lives of His audience. 

Regardless of whether or not you are a writer, you must know that the things you do are never just physical. If you want to be a musician, you aren't simply going to make music. You're going to be affected spiritually and in turn have an effect on people with the pieces you create. Same goes for doctors, business owners, secretaries, etc. When you're called to do something, you are never just completing a job. You are being changed from the inside out. That is why it so important to allow room for the Holy Spirit in your work. For me, this means the difference in writing words that heal and writing words that destroy. When we allow God to weave Himself into our work, it becomes bigger than ourselves. That is my goal.