The Story I Will Tell

I flounder and wane with the block of a writer. Not knowing what to say.

Unsure how to separate this mess of thoughts all wound up tight inside my head. It’s like a ball of dreams and worries and wonders and what-about’s all knotted up and scary-ugly.

What shall I write today? The expectation I’ve come to force upon myself. The one that says if I don’t show up, I will lose my craft. I will lose my readers. I will lose.

And the grace I used to give myself hides behind the expecting. This new found forging of the career I think I want has somehow become a tangle of prideful motivations and people-pleasing efforts I have not known since I’ve become an actual adult.

Still, I show up. Put my butt on the chair. And I write.

Because somehow I need to get through the tangle. Somehow I must emerge past the knotted-up motives and the confused where-am-I-headed’s. And I must write.

I open up email before I start. Today’s devotion shows up, and I click over to read. I notice my own name in the author’s box. I wrote these 300 words weeks ago for the series we’re doing on Jesus’ life.

I read it over like I often do, check for typos and mistakes I might not have caught earlier.

All the while, I’ve been asking, Lord, what do I write? What can I say? How shall I untangle even a thought into words for this white screen staring straight at me?

I read the devotion, and soak in the words. Jesus and the disciples and the storm that came up. Mark chapter four tells the story so well.

I notice notes in the margin of my Bible. Notes I wrote when I studied it last month. The word megas in Greek and its repeated usage here.

Megas squall. Megas calm.

It means large, great, in the widest sense. As in: when the wind died down, the calm was just as great as the storm that popped up.

And all because Jesus Christ spoke three small words.

I read fear in the disciples, panic as they wake Jesus up. It contrasts so well with the terrified they know after it’s all said and done.

They’d been fearing a mere storm, when they should’ve just feared the One Who could restore the calm. The One sleeping on a cushion in the back of the boat. The One Who could stop hurricanes with words.

I wonder as I read if He can do that to the whirlwind in my head.

And I know He can.

So I find myself back to where I always end up. Right in the middle of God’s Words for me.

It’s all I know how to write.

My thoughts alone are not enough to keep you interested. So many authors have such amazing words. Such incredible stories. But my story is different.

It’s the story of a life without clear direction. The story of my needy, full of wrong motives that need cleaning. Prideful thoughts that need purging. Fear-filled panic that needs adusting.

It’s the story of me finding real life in God’s Word.

I keep coming back to the Bible, and I realize that my writing is all about that. I can’t fill it with thoughts I can untangle and describe for you. Not like so many others whose eloquence gives way to beautiful prose and bestsellers. Those to whom God has given a different story. 

I’ve been chasing that story for myself and am left wanting for words I cannot find. Thus the flailing and the floundering for a writing topic for today.

Because my job is different from theirs. My call in this writing is to live God’s truth. To tell about Him. Who He is. What He says. My task is to make God famous in the way He has shown me.

It’s the job we all have, really. The making Him famous however He deems appropriate.

For some of us it’s writing novels. For others it’s flying planes. Or raising children. Or designing mechanical things and using geometry and physics and other mathematical skills.

I’ve been asking God for direction. What should I write? How do I do it?

He keeps pointing me back to where I began. Like today with the devotion. It’s the only thing I know to keep writing. Real life as God intended. How God’s Word  looks in skin. Finding Jesus in the now.

And this, I am finding, is the story I will tell.