Writing is Therapy

Writing for me can be cathartic. Sometimes, when I hit these metal road bumps, I can’t shake the feelings of inadequacy, feelings like I don’t fit in, like I’m not good enough. Sometimes, writing for me becomes more than words. It becomes more like picking splinters out of my mind. Sometimes.

Other times, I write to teach. I spend a lot if time listening because I feel others have much more important things to say. I truly think most other purple are tons more interesting. I like to listen. I like to agree. I enjoy understanding. Writing gives me an opportunity to find my voice – and share it.

More than anything writing affords the opportunity to be reflective. I’ve spent years of my life so quiet because it was good “to bear the yoke when young.” During those times, I wrote, without pointing out the iniquity I saw in others personally, and I found it relieving. Instead, during this time I used writing to focus on the imperfections in me.

God uses furnaces to destroy, but He also uses them to refine.

The consequences of trials or furnaces aren’t erased. Just like burns on your skin leave scars, so do those that have burned your mind. Refinement is painful. My scars have made me even more introverted. Sometimes my scars come out as a shaky voice. Sometimes they show up as mental ruts and anxiety in things, that, quite frankly, are imagined. Sometimes it manifests as simple self-doubt.

That is why I thank God so much for writing. When I write, I feel like I can run. I pour out my thoughts, but I calculate their meaning. I try to write about concepts so that others can reflect on their own personal refinement by peering through the honesty I place here. In a sense, my weakness has sharpened my strength.

Words.

I get a sense of joy out of writing. I can only imagine God, who wrote so that “through the endurance of the Scriptures we might have hope.” When we are confounded, we have someone who can empathize with us in every way. He wrote about it through the Spirit so that “our joy might be complete.”

In one of Max Lucado’s books, he writes about how Jesus is the garbage man. He sees us each walking around hoarding our sins on our shoulders, refusing His help. He sees us as we are. Then, and when we are still helpless, he comes close, embraces us until the trash slips to the ground, and bends over to pick up our trash, which is our true self. Burdened with us, he was crucified as the criminals we are so that we can be free.

Grace upon grace – the fulfillment of everything God had to say to us – written down. The power of words.

So, if your gift is writing, reading, or building and fixing, if your struggle is within or without, if you can’t tell which end is up – then you are exactly the person Christ came to save. He had someone like us write down that He “loved the whole world that he died for us.” And He wrote all about what He’s done for you since the beginning of time through the end of the world. His word remains the firm foundation for anyone who is being refined. At any interchange in life.

Always.