Write

Okay.  Here it goes.

Write.  Whew.  Just the thought of that word knocks my breath out and fills me with dreams simultaneously.

I have wanted to be a writer since I was four years old.  I couldn't even physically write then and I knew in my bones I wanted to write.  To express.  To let myself be heard and known.  And, back then, in four-year-old land, I was able to be and do anything without any fear or harm.  Those days were not completely carefree.  I was in the middle of a life filled with perfectionism and expectations.  My father had an iron fist and I was sometimes on the other end of that tragic, awful, painful experiencing of manly anger gone awry.  But, still, there were periods of peace and childhood undisturbed and I had hopes and dreams.  I was going to write and I was going to matter and be heard.

Years went by and my father got ill.  He had a polycystic kidney disease and had to travel out of town for hospitalizations, treatments, surgeries, dialysis.  My sister and I lived in various homes of friends and even with people we only knew a little.  My dad was emotional and distant and yet at times he was still there, loving me despite his own issues with rage.  My mother was frazzled and harried.  I wrote.  I loved my writing.  It was a place of solitude and comfort and refuge.  I could pour out and sort through thoughts as I wrote.  Writing wasn't to matter.  Writing mattered.

My father got more and more ill.  I grew to be a teenager and the disease won one night when I was twelve years old.  He was wheeled out past us on a guerney with his eyes as big as quarters and the life all gone out of him.  Writing became my pouring.  I needed to bleed out the pain and anguish of grief, of love lost and lost too soon.  I was a heart-stricken adolescent and writing became my therapy.

Years passed and I grew older.  I kept sporadic journals and wrote on Facebook and sent letters of encouragement to friends.  People always said, "I wish I could write like you." or "You always have such a way of saying things."  But in that time since the four-year-old magical world slipped by and the real world of rejection and loss crowded in, I lost my dream of writing for a while.

This past year or so I have heard God's whisper: It is time.  You can write.  I am starting now.  I am writing.  I am blogging.  I am crafting.  I am expressing.  I am stepping out and allowing God to move and restore dreams.  I write now to encourage, to share and to bless.  Writing has come full circle. 

Stop.