why i write (how i pray)

i don't quite remember when i started to write for my soul. probably somewhere around the time that i started to seriously consider Jesus. sometime after my "dear diary" notes about my ultra-crush on justin jones. after my winnie the pooh phase. sometime before now. i have evidence of this stacked high in an old oak trunk in my bedroom in northern california. pages and pages are added with every visit home. by now, there must be thousands.

i could never quite figure out why i love to write. my introverted side uses it as a tool to process before my extroverted side explodes the words from my mouth. my input side likes to collect phrases and stories. my crazy-brain loves it for the focus and attention it requires. my heart loves it for the clarity it provides. more than those things, though, i write (and love to write) because it is the purest and most creative worship that i can bring.

i've never been great at traditional prayer, or at least my perception of it. i can't sit still long enough, i twiddle my fingers too much and, with nothing grounding me to my thoughts, they come and go within seconds. i thought that was the only way to pray.

enter: writing. writing is my creative and prayerful worship. from scribbled notes on unlined paper and doodled truths, to letters written on a vintage typewriter--i meet with YHWH on those pages. give me the chance to put pen to paper and suddenly, stillness of heart and mind, openness to the Lord. the pages of my journal are full of Divine-human interaction (isn't that at the heart of prayer??). you can read my heart's transformation from cover-to-cover. you can see praise and hope and longing and the ongoing process of change.

i write my dreams--the dreams placed intentionally in my heart by the Lord. i write my hopes. i write my struggles. i document the way that the Lord speaks into these things, changes them and uses them by showing me Himself. david danced before the Lord; that was prayer. he wrote psalms that we pray, even to this day. i write because of the Lord, with the Lord, for the Lord; that is my prayer. certainly not the only form, but the one i love most.

how do you love to pray?

"You are called into prayer either that you might collaborate with Him in bringing His will to pass, or that you might be able to get a larger vision of what He is like."

--John White//Daring to Draw Near

september brings depth

i prefer to ignore anything that i've written prior to september
anything written before september was an attempt,
an experiment in stringing words together
to make sentences
that had meaning

but what i wrote prior to september was shallow
and cliche
and lacked insight
or even an awareness of reality

what i wrote prior to september was sheltered
and generalized
and barely scratched the surface
of the constant clanging in my brain
and always finished with a happy ending
and reading these things makes me oddly uncomfortable
with who that person was

i don't like who i was prior to september
i was hopeful, yes, but i was hiding
i was scared
and closed off
a bit cold
and maybe even fake
like a little child
trying to write about grown-up things
trying to prove my goodness and my wisdom and my value
trying to be a me that wasn't me

a little child trying to write about
love
love
love
because i thought i was entitled to it
and i thought i understood it
and i'd read so many books about waiting for it
and my heart ached for it

and when the opportunity presented itself
i ran
like we were playing a game of hide-and-seek
and my heart knew all of the good spots
because it had been hidden all along
he wasn't aware that i had regressed into a child
playing games in the playground

and i was a little girl, pretending perfection
with baby hints at emotional turmoil
without telling you that i was in distress
without honestly saying
i don't understand
where is God?
can i trust this?
help

anything written prior to september is just
a collection of nice words and hopeful ideals
reality, though, points to brokenness and questions
and a journey towards healing
and a journey towards knowledge and understanding
and Him

september, and the silent months that preceded it
changed me
because as the world spins faster and faster around you
you can either
sit still, dizzied by the movement, longing to join in
or
be swept up by the motion
and be transformed

september brought depth
and freedom
to so many parts of my life
freedom to stop striving
freedom to be nothing but myself
brokenness, fears, flaws, scars and all
freedom to stop explaining
to let my heart out of its hiding
to exist, pressureless, as me
not as bright and shiny
and perfect Christian school girl
and perfect Christian family
and perfect Christian life
that i thought was mandatory
but Christian, that is, in need of Christ

september gave me an excuse to cry
to be upset
and to look past the mild pain i was experiencing
because of a fractured relationship and
living in a place of literal isolation and loneliness
to see deeper wounds
scars that had tattered my heart

september started a process
and it flooded my vision
things that needed to be changed
vulnerability
or lack thereof
inter-dependence
or lack thereof
communication
or lack thereof

september reminded me
that i have nothing to prove
but much to learn

and that writing is worship
(worship: giving God the recognition He deserves)
so here's my act of worship
i'll write from the deepest part of my soul and mind
if i'm happy
sad
angry
confused
joyous
excited
hurt
frustrated
if i'm ....
i'll write

plenty of paper

I turned twenty this year. Twenty, I’ve decided, is an awkward birthday year--not a teenager but not quite twenty-one—and it is kind of weird to figure out how to celebrate, besides for eating inappropriate amounts of chocolate cake, which is always mandatory. Apart from turning twenty, this birthday was different than any other birthday that I’ve ever had for a whole bunch of reasons, mostly that I feel older, and I feel like I've grown. And how much I’ve grown is marked, in my life at least, by birthdays and journals.

A lot happens in twenty years. That’s two hundred and forty months. Seven thousand three hundred days. That’s enough time to make some serious headway on laugh lines and worry wrinkles, and I’m sure I’ve got both. Twenty years is a long time. And my twenty-three journals can tell you, in detail, what I was feeling and when, how it’s affected me, and how much has changed in my soul. My twenty-three journals over the past seven years are a testament that twenty years of life has been wonderful and hectic and fun and spontaneous and anxious and sad and happy and awkward and uncomfortable and challenging and exciting and all of the above, times fifty.

Some journals are more special than others. One begins in a particularly hard time and documents, over the course of seven months, a journey from paralyzing anxiety and self-doubt to noticeable joy and confidence. I love that journal. That journal has within its pages the excitement of a new relationship and my constant freak outs that accompanied it, some of my biggest fears coming to the very forefront of my mind, impossible to ignore; that journal traveled the world with me, and documents every eye-opening experience, every intimate moment spent with Jesus, every creative burst of energy. It’s amazing to look back and remember, and to look forward with hope, knowing that if that was possible, then really, anything is.

Some, many, were gifts, and anybody who has given me a journal has done me a great service, more so than I even understood when I began writing in them. Writing in journals used to just be a way to write my history as it was happening, a cool gift that I could give my children in the future, and a way to look back on how I’ve grown and transformed, and I really have. These journals, though, have become so much more because as I’ve grown up, I’ve discovered a love, a passion, for writing, with journals being my outlet, my blank canvas.

I turned twenty this year. The fourth of August. For my birthday, I was given what was, at the time, the most beautiful and thoughtful gift I’d ever been given. A journal that was so much more than a journal. A hand-made, hand-painted, hand-sewn journal with a hand-written note; truly, it was an incredible gift, and I felt that this gift meant that I, with my passions and my quirks and my daily routines, was truly known. I was nervous to write in it, hesitant that my words would destroy it. It was so special, I thought that it should be saved for something equally as beautiful, equally as inspiring. I wanted to fill its pages with the best I had to offer, just like I wanted to give the gift-giver the very best of me, too. I just wanted to read and reread that letter, over and over again, letting its words sink into my heart. I never did and never will write in that journal, regardless of the empty pages that I see staring back at me. In the short period of time where writing in this journal was acceptable, no inspiration came. And I had angst over what to do with it once that window of time closed—I couldn’t throw it away and waste the creativity and affection that went into making it, just for me. I couldn’t write in it, and I certainly couldn’t leave it on my nightstand, waiting in vain to be filled with inspiration. My hopeful and scrambled thoughts would need to find their home elsewhere. I packed it away at the bottom of my hope chest, and moved onto the next journal.

It was just a journal. I guess.

I’ve written in three since then, which, given the four short months since August, makes me wonder what else I did with my time. The answer: a lot. These months have been the most wonderful months, filled to the brim with people, laughter and spontaneity, sleepless nights and life. I wrote about it all. I especially wrote about the big changes on the horizon, where I see my life headed and what is next, constantly peering into the past, trying to learn from mistakes, gathering as much insight from my experiences as was humanly possible.

At the semester's end, when my two best friends at school drove me to the airport to say goodbye, not just for break, but in a way, for good (we’ll never cuddle in my bed until four in the morning and tell stories and take pictures on Photobooth, and we’ll never yell for each other from the room next door, and things are certainly about to change), they pulled out a journal. It wasn’t hand-made, or hand-painted, or hand-sewn. It was mass-produced and I could find hundreds, if not thousands, of people with an identical journal. The handwriting was barely legible, but when I read the words, and felt the thought behind them, I discovered that though they had hardly known me for three months, they knew me. The thoughtfulness of this gift proved it. No person, they said, should have a monopoly on giving journals with nice letters in them, regardless of who that person was. They knew how much I loved that journal, and how hard it was to put it away for good. They knew about my passions and my flaws, they saw it all--they saw me when smiles and laughter were bubbling out of me and they saw me when I couldn’t stop the tears; they saw me when I was too nervous to say how I felt, and they saw me when I spoke with boldness; they saw me at 3 in the morning, after the delirium had set in and they saw me, cranky and edgy and stressed, after writing three papers. They knew the real me. Crazy study habits, ridiculous bursts of energy, awkward interactions, talkative, quiet, and everything in between. With such knowledge of me, they gave me this journal, with two of the most beautiful letters, the most heartfelt and thoughtful things that anybody could ever say to me. I sat in the airport and cried, looking like the biggest weirdo in the Southwest Airlines waiting area, reading what they wrote me, acknowledging that this gift, this journal, was by far the best gift I’d ever been given.

I wasn’t filled with hesitation about filling its pages with my life, as messy and complicated as it sometimes is, or as hopeful and passionate as it can be, too. In fact, knowing the people who gave it to me, the only way to even do this gift justice was to fill it up with the most honest expressions of my heart, with every frustration and every passionate whim, every logistically planned out detail, every fear, every revelation about the greatness of God, every single dream about where my life is going.

When I got home, I pulled that other journal out of my trunk, and I opened it. I remembered how I felt when I looked at it for the first time, when I read the letter and hugged the gift-giver, feeling so special that this journal was for me and was created with me in mind; I remembered the value that I had once placed on this book and the words inside. I traced the cover with my finger, traced the picture that had been delicately painted on, traced the used binding, traced the words, reflecting on the creativity and, I daresay, love that went into making it. I reread the letter, wondering what kind of feelings it would evoke, because that letter once made me feel like the most beautiful, special girl in the entire world.

It paled in comparison. Because with time, I’ve changed. Things have changed. The girl who got that journal so many months ago is hardly around anymore. I’m the same, and yet, I’m incredibly different. I’m part old but mostly new. This new journal marked a new moment in my life. I didn’t celebrate it with balloons or a fancy dinner or cake, but, in my heart, and in journal world, I celebrated just how far I’ve come, and I celebrated the people and the deep love that I do have in my life, as unexpected as it was.

I’ll still keep that old journal, and remember affectionately what it used to mean to me, with no hard feelings. I’ll look at it and remember how perfect it was way back then. And when I write in my new journal, I’ll remember who I am now, a new creation, a better, more creative, inspired, laughy, joyful, passionate, confident, still anxious, still awkward, still indecisive, version of myself.

grammar

if only there were a way to write that didn’t feel so insanely vulnerable
like the naked dream on replay
which i’ve never had
but i feel like it would feel somewhat like writing
like bearing your soul for the world to read and stand all over
with their response hidden from my eyes

i know that i don’t have to write
but sometimes it feels like words are all that I have to offer
and i’m not using punctuation because i don’t like the finality of periods
commas are okay
because there is still more to come

i’m not good at talking unless i really know what to say
or have it planned out
i stumble over my words and get too excited
i’m awkward and unprepared
sometimes for important conversations, i write it out first so that it’s
perfect
because i don’t want to screw it up
i usually do anyways

but when i write, my mind and my soul come together and everything is
clear
and even if you don’t, i get it
for me,
writing is cathartic
writing is worship
i love music
a lot
a lot a lot
but words
connect me with my Jesus

everything is a story
i hope that my story points to Him
i hope that my words point to Him

writing is scary
because i want to shout from the rooftops about
His goodness
but how do i do that without letting you into a part of me
that is reserved for very few
that is reserved for One
or two, someday

how do i tell you about His mercy without telling you that
i need mercy
how do i tell you about His strength without telling you that
i am weak
how do i tell you that He bound up my broken heart without telling you that
i am broken
how do i tell you that He is peace without telling you that
i know anxiety
and i don’t particularly feel comfortable having my
life on display
it felt safer when i knew that my mom was the only one reading
anything that i wrote
but if it is what He wants, then
here it is

right now, i don’t like the finality of periods
maybe it’s not just with periods
i don’t like finality
period
(haha)

except in some cases
like love
and marriage
and that a ring means forever
and ever
you can put a billion periods after my wedding day
i like that

but sometimes i don't like finality
that something is over, forever
it feels like giving up
walking away, without hope
and i have hope

maybe it isn’t giving up
maybe it’s letting something new begin with the excitement of
Capitalization
and i love that newness

still, i am an idealist
i don’t want to give up on anything that
He still has plans for

except there are somethings
i wish would just end
with 8,000 periods behind it
………………
because it just needs to be done

but life is a run-on sentence
or maybe thirty
with commas and semi-colons and parentheses
and i don't know where it will go
and i don't know where to put the periods
because i'm not writing this story