Your Story: It's a Gift to You!
The last time I sat at the keyboard, I contemplated the gift of our writing to a reader, and that’s precious. Writers can be moved to tears when readers receive, open, and respond to the message gift. Never take readers’ eyes for granted—they can be so many places in the world and on the web, but they’ve chosen a writer’s space. A writer celebrates that kind of thing!
So Many Gifts…
Writing has a few whys, and the purpose is closely-tied to connecting with a reader, but there are deeply personal benefits, too. Let’s think about how we open the gifts from writing waiting for us.
Memories
Memory is a gift—after all, we might not always have that. I turned 50 not that long ago, and I may start believing the hype about walking through doorways and forgetfulness. Maybe.
Honestly, we have memories. I wrote this years ago.
Early memories are somehow indelible and nearly transparent. It’s surreal. Some images are as crisp as today. The rest are faded around the edges and far away. They’re right here and just beyond clarity. They swirl into a brilliant mix of incredible and wonderful and frustrating, maybe excruciating. Imagining, or even willing, the past dead and gone is wrong. That’s not how the brain works.
Memory is an amazing gift. For many of us our whole life rests there, waiting in the wings to be recalled for an encore.
In my story I think about the sweetest ones:
In my mind’s eye mounds of dew-kissed, purple iris blooms reach toward the summer sky in my childhood front yard. I rest in lush grass, staring at the sky’s white, puffy animals floating by. Tiny, white, star-like dots contrast the deep red on my apple. The scent of my Nana’s fresh-baked oatmeal raisin cookies fills her galley kitchen. I’ve snuck a sip of buttermilk from her forgotten glass on the table, and the bitter taste lingers. I can hear Papa Gordon’s quiet, sandy voice and see his long, slow movements.
Memory combined with caring and positive emotion is sweetness to the soul. These memories are important to count, recount, and thoroughly enjoy. We’ve got to take time to do that.
Memories are little puffs of smoky vapor, easily blown with the winds,
shapeshifting from moment to moment.
Opaque with significance. Elusive in their misty recollections.
While we have opportunity, let’s capture memories, celebrate the especially sweet ones, and consider healing promise that may be woven into the bittersweet.
Relationships
Writing is an invitation to relationship…to God, to yourself, and to others.
Journaling can be an exercise that invites the Lord into a writing process that’s dramatically different bathed in relationship with the One who is wisdom and truth and love and grace. Better not to string powerful words together without His presence and counsel in the moment (that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried!). Intimate contact with God enables a writer to think clearly, write excellently, and evaluate the content honestly. When the words are held up to His truth, we may be more likely see the threat of despair cultural craftiness offers. There’s “natural” ability, skill honed within a culture, and then there’s His inspiration at work. (I’ll take the latter over the others any day!) Let’s get our eyes and hearts on Him; we need to follow His lead.
Relationship to self in the writing process is precious, even more so when God-given identity is discovered during the process. The close connection with my heavenly Father reveals who He says I am, and that identity walks boldly into the writing process and informs the process, rather than (dangerously) the other way around.
In relationship to others, it’s about the reader: a writer extends an invitation. But what of any significance would I have to offer my reader if not words that pointed to the amazing, deep, transforming relationship with the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit? What compares? What else could genuinely, positively, and eternally impact a life? Where would I take my reader? Am I okay with the destination?
A writer roots words in significant, life-transforming ideas. She knows where the words come from and where they are headed. She asks good questions, and the answers settle in the soul. Hopefully, the writer is in deep, real connection with the One who made the soul, and the answers have that kind of integrity.
A writer knows and is in relationship to her God, knows who she is becoming, and has a heart to love her people.
The Healing Journey
The gift of healing through writing is, maybe, most precious to me. I’m aware of beautiful healing in the creative process. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about the healing journey each of us is on. The art within has powerful healing properties.
Studies show it, but a writer instinctively knows something shifted when a scene has been written and the swirl of emotions offloaded to the page. Catharsis. Add deep thought, emotional processing, and a little editing—there might be something there.
When the writer gets to know the characters in the story, even her own character, something is different. When she stands more confidently in her God-given identity unashamed, something is new. When she can forgive other characters and experience a breath of fresh freedom, even better. When she can identify the pieces of redemption, something powerful is happening! Oooh, gifts to the writer!
The story may even be ready to be wrapped and presented to the reader as a gift…
