Write Life

Few things are as sweet as a new book.  The crisp pages yet to be ruffled with hands deep in the mess of life, a newness unspoiled.  The woody smell of paper yearning to share the aroma as each page turns.  The firmness of the spine, yet to bend to anyone’s desires or wishes, holding back the story, the message, the journey.  An expectancy of the unknown, the “what if”, the carpe diem,  

all for the taking.

Each year as the calendar flips to its last page, people throughout the world, pause and reflect on the last book they wrote, or read.  Make no mistake, all are authors. Sadness seeps in for those who did not write; a feeling of lostness, of restlessness, often over takes them. 

Questions circulate; are they simply watching life pass by, reading from someone else’s manuscript?  Or have they passed the point of reading, to succumb to being the one who doesn’t reach for the book, the one who allows it to remain closed, lifeless, locked? 

For me, the restlessness is a danger sign.                                                                           

 A warning light flashing, cautioning me, change direction …. danger in sight. 

As author of my story, I have learned to heed the danger signs.  Close the book, surrender the story, change directions, start a new chapter.  The options are endless, but the choice depends with me. 

With me???   You might push back….. how arrogant, how prideful.  The story is not yours, it is not about you, does not depend on you, it is God’s story.  He alone is the author of the story.

How right you are….and yet, how wrong.

Jesus Christ alone is the author of the Grand Story, the story above all stories, the story that encases all stories.  He is the author extraordinaire and yet he chooses to share his story and mingle it with ours.  Ours becomes a story within the story.  Even more absurd, he hands over authorship to allow us to write our own story within his story as he skillfully weaves the two together into a mosaic of other stories.  He is the master craftsman.

When creating plot lines, people often ask me, about the role of God in our story.  Shouldn’t we seek to give him the pen, to step back and allow him to write for us?  This sounds so true, so right, but when exposed to light we see the flaws.  Hidden in the folds of crinkled papers folded shut awaiting the pen are flaws.  Tears in the logic, in the truth.

Perhaps the Creator, who created us to create, would prefer us instead of abdicating creating to him and leaving him alone in the creative process, to embrace who he made us to be.  To rejoice with him as we create together.  As we know him, we learn the trajectory of the story in which ours will fit. 

Will we choose to surrender to his theme and allow our story to reflect the larger story?  Will we take our setting, our character, and embellish the theme?  Will we decorate the pages with the joy of allowing him to create through us?

Through us……

Through us, not for us.  What a difference in those two postures.   His will is to reveal himself through us, through our story, which implies that we must write our story.  We must live our story.

Will you surrender for him to write through you?????

Sometimes our stories are tragedies, others are comedies.  Often we walk away and stop writing when we mistakenly believe our story is rubbish or not worthy of writing.  At times I have fallen to this deceit.  I have allowed my pen to fall silent, my book to drop closed as shame limits and binds me, but no more.

Instead realise the potential, the opportunity of redemption and restoration, of reaching for the pen and choosing to transform.

It is not the tragedy or the comedy that is heart-breaking; it is the empty pages of the book not written.  The blank vacant pages void of life.

Wasted pages.







Steward your story well.  Join a writer’s guild and share the theme, navigate the plot line together, cultivate your character.  Find a mentor or a coach who will challenge you to write, to write purposefully, and to write life.

But in the end,

Write.