When Ink Touches Paper...

I've been thinking a lot about writing lately.

Not blogging necessarily, although this is a great outlet for it, but writing. The world of words. The place where there are absolutely no rules as to what you can say or where the adventure can lead you. The place where you can be free to end things the way you want them to be ended. Where you can grow the characters in the way you want them to be grown. Where you can invent new dreams and trees and colors, if you so desire.

I love to write. It is part of my purpose and calling. I love to take my own circumstances and pour them out into a story. To create a character that I can truly identify with, who knows my heart, who acts how i act, all the while unaware that his setting is not my setting. That his setting is all he knows and all he can see. A setting of my making. A setting without limits. A setting where the things in my life and the desires of my heart make sense and the waterfalls go upward.

Words are truly the greatest gift that I have been given. Now, I don't mean the word "gift" as in "talent." I mean it as in "gift." Something God gave me for me to enjoy. The ability to create. The ability to go beyond grammar. The ability to mold life into something beautiful and to experience Him in an amazingly intimate way. I get to pour it all. All of my heart can flow onto these pages. It is not bound by the restraints of this world when it is coming to life in mine. What can the world say to me in a place that is purely mine and God's?

Nothing.

But I can speak to it. And I can speak to God. In fact, I think it's what I was created for. To dive into the world where all the stories live. My true home. And to discover the heart of the Lord there. It is my joy to pour my portion of words upon the throne of God because it means that I get an all-access-pass to that world. Words are alive in and of themselves, and we get the honor of discovering them when we are obedient in our searching. Even the rocks can cry out if they search hard enough, because their worship already lives.

Jean Rhys put it like this in an interview with the Paris Review: "Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don't matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake."

(Thank you Madeline L'Engle for pointing that out in your brilliant book: Walking on Water)

I think Jean is on to something. There is something within us that calls us to write. Or that calls us to create at the very least. Talking with my various friends who are amazing painters or musicians, I think they feel the same way about their own avenues of creativity. We were born to pour this all upon the throne. It is our purpose, our honor, our joy, and our unyielding duty. Only God would wrap all of those things into one.

When I enter the world of writing, I feel as if I am taking steps towards wholeness, towards my identity. And once I get past my time restraints and half-hearted excuses, the door is cracked open to a place that is so brilliant and beautiful that my physical eyes would not be able to handle it. It can only exist in my living imagination. Where the eyes of my heart, just now opening, are the ones who have the pleasure of seeing it. When I serve that world of words and bring them to life, I feel the Lord move. We all have a place where this is true. Be faithful to it, friends. There is so much to discover.