30 Days of Giving #18: Write

The new and old are coming together in me.  It’s not been easy letting go…

I ran the risk of losing something that held value. Like forgetting the person who gave me what I’ve held since childhood; a trinket that has no value other than the memory.

Leaving a place that is full of the memories of life; roads driven, paths walked, beaches strolled.

 

 

Leaving is hard.  It’s important to acknowledge the pain of loss, the difficulty of change.

But don’t stop there. That’s called being stuck.  Or if knowing change is hard keeps us from making changes, that is fear.  Fear of the unknown can keep us from growing.  From fully living the one life we’ve been given.

In facing the hard and chipping away at it a little at a time the process of change can be manageable.  Loss is still painful.  Change is still hard but little by little, bite-size even, changes can be handled.

In the big move there were 1000 decisions at least.  I didn’t count them but I know there were hundreds for sure!  What to keep. What to give. What to sell. What to donate. What to store.

Books were hardest for me.  Some valuable for their age and condition. Some valuable for the laughter they brought. Some valuable for the markings made in the reading.  We have 6 boxes of books left.  I have unpacked one.  My journals.

My life on paper from the ripe old age of 13 to present day.  I don’t read through them on a regular basis. I don’t need to. I know what season of life each journal cover holds close.  I glance at the cover and remember. Ah yes. High School.  Another? Early motherhood.  Yet another?  A book of deep grief.

Collections of quotes, song lyrics, poems read and copied, poems written by hand and heart. Prayers cried through. Praise recorded. Deep wounds brought to Light for healing.

The old and new coming together in me.

I write.  The following is from a class I am taking currently:

I write because I have this sense of responsibility. 

I write because I was given stories by elders who are now gone; there are those behind me who see faces in scrapbooks but those lives are meaningless without the stories.

I write because I was given the oral traditions of our family and must pass them on to the next generations whether they stop to read them or not

I write because I hold my hand back into the past to hold its hand while reaching forward into the future to grasp its hand; as if I am the connecting conduit from past to future.

I write because I have a burning passion to allow the telling of the dark parts their freedom from hiding that they can be revealed and healed in the Light

I write because there is a holy nudge gently prodding the stories, the words, the phrases out of my head through my heart

I write because I need to

I write because it helps me to think aloud onto paper

I write to process

I write to be free

I write to record my personal Old Testament; to record the faithfulness of God at work in my life and my family’s lives.

My current journal’s cover. It will remind me of this year of The Big Move. No one may ever care to read what’s held close by this cover but I must write.

I’m a writer. It’s how I process life and am able to offer myself to others.

What are your thoughts about writing?