Last month I was welcomed in to the most
incredible community of women in Story101.
We live in different countries, on different continents. Most of us have never met in person. We come from different faith backgrounds and
life experiences, but we all work in the medium of the written word and support
one another through that journey. We
encourage each other in our writing. We
cry and laugh together. We applaud one
another’s successes. We push each other
through the rough stuff. Sometimes we
just get on the phone and pray together.
These women are amazing. I love
them. And I am so grateful to have them
in my life.
This past week’s assignment was to write
the hard thing. I’ve struggled. I sat down every day last week and attempted
to write it. All I ended up with were
fragments of stories. One day birthed a
letter that will never be sent. Another
day dawned on the image of an elderly woman lost in a library, desperately
searching through a card catalogue for a book whose title she couldn’t remember. One day saw nothing but echoing sobs and a
heart-aching longing for a friend who left too soon, laments for all that could
have been, but never will be. I borrowed
the suggestion of my friend, Abby, one night and penned a permission note to
myself: To embrace anger and loss and
grief. To celebrate and lament with the
same breath. To extend grace to those whose grief does not mirror my own. But at the end of the week when I looked back
at all my words, I realised I had written only portions of the hard thing. I wrote circles around it without ever
writing through it, without ever
actually naming it.
There is a power in the naming. In the opening chapter of Hosea, God tells Hosea the names which should be given to the children bore by his
wife, Gomer. Their son will be called
Jezreel – the place where God will destroy the power of Israel. Their daughter will be named Lo-Ruhamah –“not
loved”. And their third child, a son, to
be named Lo-Ammi- “not my people”. There
is a power in the naming. Verse 9 cuts
through the heart: “for you are not my
people, and I am not your God.” Wow. But Chapter 2 redeems:
“Say of your brothers, ‘My people’, and of your sisters, ‘My loved one’…. and the earth will respond to the grain, and the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. I will plant here for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’ and they will say, ‘You are my God.’”
There
is much more to the book of Hosea, but I always seem to dwell here. The place
where God destroyed, He will plant and bring new life, those unloved will now know
love, those who were not His will now know His embrace. The naming reveals the redemption. If it wasn’t broken it wouldn’t need
restoration.
Our next assignment in Story101 is
memoir. We’ve been asked to identify a
theme for our memoir and consider how we would illustrate it throughout our
work. I am not writing a memoir, but
I’ve been applying the exercise to my writing and story in general. And without a doubt, I want the theme of my
story to be redemption. I want the plot of my life to reveal restoration. I want the marvellous scandal of grace and
renewal to be woven into my writing.
But my hard thing, it is back in chapter one. It is in the destroyed, the broken, the
unloved, the alone.
I believe in a God who makes all things
new. I believe that there is nothing
beyond His redemptive power. I believe
that He is at work in my life and your life, working all this to the good of
those who believe in Him. I believe
it. But I don’t always trust it. There are chapters of story, segments of
life, where this finite mind has not yet noticed the hand of a loving Saviour
at work.
I think that’s why I haven’t been able to
write the hard thing. I don’t want to
leave fragments of story that don’t point toward redemption. Because this is the “for you are not my
people, and I am not your God” part of the story. Because chapter two hasn’t been written
yet. And even if I promise to blog a review
about it, God says I don’t get an advanced copy. I
don’t want to leave people with a narrative that doesn’t denote the redemptive,
restorative grace of our Lord. I don’t
want to leave me with that narrative, staring into the abyss of a story with all
these loose ends. Because what if it
ends there? What if the second chapter
never gets written? I believe that God will make all things
new, but do I trust Him to actually
do it?
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”
-Terry Tempest Williams “If Women Were Birds”
Maybe it’s time for another permission slip
to myself. To speak the truth and let
the world split open. To stop hanging
paintings over the holes in the plaster. To strip away fanciful writing. To stop hiding behind metaphors. To recognize the power in the naming. This
doesn’t have to be beautiful. It just
has to be true. It’s not my job to find
the redemption. I don’t have to wait for
the renewal or create the restoration.
Just expose the brokenness and let God do the rest.
If you’d like to be apart of this
extraordinary community of women who will push when you need pushing and hold
you when you need holding, who will speak new life into your writing and your
living, then you’re in luck!
Registration is now available for the next Story101 Session. Check here for more information and to register.
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