The Writer In Me

"If you find yourself asking yourself, and your friends, "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" Chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death." - Steven Pressfield, 'The War Of Art'


      I found inspiration in this quote this morning. It speaks to the writer in me that, apparently, is perfectly normal. I like to write, I want to write...but I don't really like to write and rarely want to. Sometimes I think I want to, but not enough to actually start, much less finish something.

It is scary! I'm not entirely sure why. I think writing is a lot like baring your soul. Which is scary. Writing is also asking someone to approve of your thoughts; your ideas - of you. That's scary. Sometimes I think I'm not changed or affected by what people think... but obviously the writer in me is. The writer in me is learning.

      The truth is, the writer in me is tired. It seems that there is nothing new to write about! But surely there is. Life is ever changing, ever expanding... I have no excuses. I must simply: begin.

Dreaded Revelations

       God's really on a roll this week, speaking to me in the grimiest situations! Last night I spend hours dreading my husband's hair. Yes - my new husband now has dreadlocks. The dreading process is unbelievably long and messy. You tease the hair, then apply wax and twist, twist, twist. Wax gets everywhere. EVERYWHERE. The wax binds the dread to make it stay together.

       It takes so much time to rub that wax way down deep into every dread. As I found out last night, it takes A LOT of wax to tame hair that's teased way beyond frizz. After you've gotten all your dreads twisted and waxed together as they can be, you blow dry them. This is a very important step! The heat melts the wax deep down into the dread and that is what will concrete the dread into place. It's all about the heat.

       This morning during Women's Bible Study I was thinking of how sometimes it's like God just melts over you. He completely surrounds you and soaks every part of you. He covers you up and holds you together like wax does a dread. But that melting, that concreting holding-together process, only happens under heat. When the heat gets turned on in your life, and your scalp is on fire and you don't think you can take it anymore...God melts around you, concreting and securing His faithfulness to you - in you. He holds us together, like wax. And that security in Him becomes more and more real and tangible only after God sees you through times of intense heat. Like I said, this is a VERY important step in the process. Without the times of trial where we allow God to pull us through and mold us and shape us and show us His goodness, we will never truly know what is it to be held together by God.


       He is the only thing that can hold us together - and He does it best when the heat is on.