On Writing

                  It’s been my dream since age nine to write a book. Not just any book, mind you—a best seller: a book no-one would be able to put down, a book to last decades, a book to be read at bedtime. First and foremost, a story that would live in many hearts.

                  I wrote my first full-length story (perhaps only ten pages) on a dilapidated laptop, typing clumsily every day at the kitchen island. Fast-forward a few months, and I was writing a new story. And the next month, another. Ideas shot through my head faster than I could write.

                  Maybe somewhere around age fifteen, I began writing only in my journals: personal accounts and thoughts about life. Not long after I began, I stopped. Journaling was hard. My wrist would ache as I squeezed my pen. I couldn’t write as fast as I thought. Sometimes I couldn’t think of the right word. And I never could write exactly what I was thinking or feeling. It became immensely frustrating.

                  Writing still has been frustrating and very difficult for me. But when I get going and my fingers fly, everything feels oh so right.  

                  I lay awake last night pondering the future. What I will do. Where I am going.  And I realized I didn’t really want to do anything else but write, even if it meant wading through fire and ashes getting there. Perhaps writing is truly difficult for me, but it is my dream, my passion, my God given gift.

                  I thought about the parable Jesus told concerning the tenants, where the master goes on a journey and gives each tenant some money to keep for him until he returns. Some go and invest in it, others find unique ways to grow the money he gave them. But one tenant buries the money. Maybe he doesn’t want a risk, or maybe he’s lazy. When the master returns, he’s so proud of the tenants who grew the money he gave them and so unhappy with the lazy tenant.

                  I’m sure the faithful tenants worked hard. It was difficult to not be passive, but actively get out there and take risks and use that which was given them.

                  It terrifies me that I might wake up one day and look in the mirror and see that unfaithful, lazy tenant.

                  Something Jesus said sticks to my heart: “He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much.”

                  I so often talk of changing the world, but I neglect what God has set before me. This is my lot, let me praise Him for it.

                  I want to change lives, but I can’t break free from the mirror, from what others think of me, from a longing to be in a relationship.

                  I want to glorify God in all that I do, but I continue to daily waste my time on trivial talk, Pinterest, Instagram, and worrying about followers and stupid things like style and what I need to buy and blah blah blah.

                  So this ended up being a really ramble-y post. But to summarize, I’m going to write. I’m going to (by God’s grace) make a commitment to be faithful to grow and develop this gift. Even when no-one is watching. Even if no-one ever reads this blog. Even if I never publish a book.

                  So I can stand before God and shiver with child-like delight as he beams over my weak attempts to glorify him.