When you want to write, the most important thing to do is just start writing. It doesn't have to be about anything in particular. Just put your hands on the keyboard and start typing what comes to mind. Soon your first thought will turn into a few sentences. Which will blend into a paragraph. With another paragraph shortly behind. That's how you start writing...you just write.
Of course, deleting all of that nonsense once you get to what you actually hoped you'd be writing about so nobody sees it is kind of important as well!
If I had a dollar for every time I heard, or read, this type of advice...
Unfortunately, I've subconsciously taken that advice and applied it to my life in general. That is...I delete all of the nonsense that led me to where I am once I'm at the point I think I should be. You know what I mean?
I don't tell the rough parts of the story.
The parts I feel embarrassed about. The ones that make me look like I don't know what I'm doing and instead make me look as if I'm just fumbling around like I'm in a dark room trying to find a door.
The parts where your "deep & dark sins" don't magically go away once you start following Jesus.
The parts where you struggle with the same issues as you thought you got over years ago.
You just happen to delete the part of your story where you made someone feel terrible. Where you didn't do the right thing. When you weren't the parent you could have been, the spouse you could have been, the employee, the leader, the human being you could have been.
We want to gloss over those parts even though they are an absolute necessity to jump-starting us in the right direction.
We need to stumble through them, and not ignore them, to become the person we truly are.
I tend to think Jesus doesn't just ignore those parts of the story and pretend they didn't happen.
Yes he removes our sins, and no we're not supposed to wallow in shame. However I don't think he means for us to act like we didn't do them in the first place. But instead he uses our experiences, our failures & our sins to help write the rest of our story.
I think that if we pretend they aren't there, our story just isn't complete. And really, it ends up not being our story at all. And we all know what happens when we pass off a story that isn't our own AS our own...right? When we act out a part that isn't really us?
It looks like crap and people smell it from a mile away. Some people even have a name for it.
And yet, I know I do it all the time. Even though somehow I feel my pretending those elements of my life don't exist makes it more complicated for God to transform & leverage them. Feel the same?
