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.
