The Writing Road to Peace

Are there any writer types out there, or other types, that can cry over what you yourself have written--even the second or third or fifth time you read over it? Can you make yourself laugh out loud?

Every time this happens to me I feel a little foolish. I don't aim to take myself too seriously. I don't try to take my writing too seriously either. But those words I've flung from my brain through my fingers onto the screen or the paper can get to me, coming and going.

I've spent a number of hours the past few days during spring break writing a story about a recently deceased sister from our church. It's for a book that a friend of mine is writing/compiling. I've spent time talking to her children, reading over things she's written, and reflecting on what life dished out for her and how she responded. I don't know if she cried while she lived it, but I cried reliving it.

Perhaps this happens because writing forces me to be thoughtful like almost nothing else does. If I'm going to write about something, I have to think about what is worth noticing and worth saying. In doing so, I evaluate constantly and make judgments about what is banal and what is significant, what is trite and what is insightful. I discover things that are common and delightful at the same time. I look for patterns and try to understand how things fit together. I'm awed sometimes by what emerges. In doing so, the realities of my own experience thrust themselves to the fore, and I'm forced to consider their significance, their patterns, their delights, and how I'm dealing with them.

When I'm thinking about the life of a godly woman, I can't help being shamed or inspired by what I find. Doubly so when I contemplate the personal cost of living life faithfully as another has done, and count its cost in my own life. I'd like though, to dial back the intensity right now without contemplating this any further.

But life doesn't come with a "Pause" button. Certainly we don't have to live it all at 90 miles an hour, and times of intentional quiet waiting are possible. But neither can we push the "Play" and "Stop" buttons at will and expect the events of life to come to us only when we're totally ready for the experience. Nor can we exit when we don't want to "hear" or "see" any more.

God has his finger on the buttons. To let Him press them as He wills, and to learn to be at peace with his right to do that will probably occupy me for the rest of my days.

Bear with me. It may take a lot of writing to arrive at that place of peace.