I didn’t go out looking for a word. You know how some people spend time and energy thinking about what their “word” will be for the year. It was never that way for me. Instead of thinking and thinking and thinking until my brain combusts, God just drops a word in my mind. Kind of like the way rain just appears when you least expect it and before you know it there are drops and drops all over you.
We were in conference room of the church office building. It was a youth meeting, the lights were dimmed, Anu asked us to be still and silent and listen for God… Which by the way, never works for me. Whenever anyone asks me to be still and silent I don’t often hear anything from God. But anyways, it wasn’t during the still and silent. It wasn’t while the lights were partially off and Matt was strumming his guitar in the background. It was when we were all talking. When we were telling stories, laughing, just going around the room. That’s when I first heard the whisper. That’s when the first raindrop landed.
God said “write” and I said “hell no!”
And that was just the first raindrop. The flash floods came pretty soon after.
Because there was a trade of. In true Meg vs God fashion, there had to be a trade of.
My excuse for not writing as often as I’d like to or should was always because I was in school. School work, school studies, school papers always trumped what free time I had left to write. So, I just couldn’t. I couldn’t write because I had to focus on school. And then I graduated, so I didn’t have school. But here’s the thing about graduating, when you graduate you have to start paying the student loans back. And as it is, Meg can hardly pay to survive. So not being in school and not taking classes was not an option. Because I had to stay in school. Because I had to keep deferring those loans. That was the Meg argument.
The God argument was not as cut and paste. There was no concrete cause and effect or step by step how to solve the problem. The God argument was “Write, and I’ll take care of the rest.”
That’s not even an argument! There’s no supporting evidence. There’s nothing to back up the claim or even lead one to know where the resolution will come from. It was just one command. One word even! But it was one word and a whole lot of faith.
And of course, God won.
So in 2020, I wrote.
In journals, on my phone notebook, on little napkins I found laying around in my car. I wrote every little thing out. The good things that I want to look back at and remember. The bad things that made me cry and break into pieces. The God things that were direct messages from the big man upstairs. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. 27,731 words. 69 pages. 37 blog posts. And that’s just on my computer. That doesn’t include the filled journals or the ongoing phone notes or the little scribbles on bits of paper.
And in doing so, in writing every little feeling out, I made my way through one of the most challenging years I’ve ever experienced. Because writing to me isn’t just jotting down some notes or important points. It is every little pain, every tear shed, every heartbreaking moment, every confusing argument I have with God. It is my way of taking the way too many emotions I have and not only trying to make sense of them but bringing them to God. Because when I write them, when I put it into words and then put it onto the internet, I am admitting that they are real. I am admitting that they are hard to deal with and even harder to understand. And the only person who can possibly help me overcome all of these emotions is the one person who told me to write in the first place.
I don’t really write for people’s amusement. Maybe at one point I did, but not anymore. I also don’t really write because it necessarily brings joy to my life. Quite honestly, it’s the exact opposite. Writing makes me cry- the ugly cry with snot dripping down my face. But what I’ve come to realize after a year of writing it all out, is that writing helps me talk to God. It helps me listen to what He’s saying. It helps me remember what He’s teaching me. It helps me know which direction He’s calling me towards. Writing is the Holy Spirit moving from my heart to my hands and forming into words.
And so I did it. And so I will continue to do it. Because God moves powerfully through this woman, and He works even more powerfully through the words I write.