It’s good to ask, why?

Why do I write? I thought I’d spend some time today sharing what led me to where I am now. Why do I spend long hours typing away often exploring deeply emotional issues? Why do I find my mind buzzing with ideas at the most random times like brushing your teeth? Why do I sometimes sit in my pyjamas, hair unbrushed, as another idea has popped into my head and I have to get it down?

Writing was never far from me even when I was a child. I would often go around scribbling meaningless things in a notebook. But it wasn’t until the teenage years that writing started to change for me – it began to be a coping mechanism, a way of trying to communicate with others things that I could not seem to speak. Being painfully introverted in school, I struggled to find a way to communicate with others. So I found myself leaning on the written word, anything I wanted to say, I would write it down rather than speak it out loud.

In the middle of my teenage years, I got sick with M.E. and disappeared from school. In those painfully lonely years, I relied on the written word even more. I even asked friends if they would write me letters. Writing had become a crutch and I leaned on it heavily. Writing became my voice.

As I got older and my teenage years were nearly behind me, my life was turned upside down by being given a terminal diagnosis of a disease I had never heard of. It was during this time the writing became frenzied, I wrote desperately. I wrote for six months during the testing stages of this disease. Writing became a trauma aid – I could pour my heart out, everything I was feeling and once it was on the page it was out of my head. I found a release in writing.

There have been times since then that I have turned to it again and again and each time it has evolved. Writing is a part of my history – when I look it is in every corner and nook of my life. I used to despise how writing seemed to be the way I communicated – writing is a voice that I would never raise – but God has been changing my mind on that.

Just as He made me (sometimes awkwardly) introverted, a dreamer, a lover of books – He also made me a lover of writing and with every passing year, He has been growing it. It is not the same now as though early days when I wandered with a notebook trying to find the words.

Writing was only for me – I would write to try and understand myself. Then I began to write and others might say it was good so I would write for them and enjoyed the affirmations, the sense of belonging. Yet now as I have nearly walked through my twenties, He has been changing me again – as He shows me that writing is to bless others. It’s not about the praises or moulding your words for other people, but it’s about blessing them.

Just as an artist creates a beautiful painting and someone buys it for their home and it blesses their home and brings them joy, writing is the same. You can write letters of encouragement or even just a note, you can write someone a poem, you can write to tell someone why you love them and it will bless them.

Writing is like a mirror, it will show you yourself, it will show you what you ache for, what is hurting, it will bring your soul alive, its an adventure and as life changes and you change, so will your writing. Yet it is not until we share all that with others that it will do its full work.

I am blessed to share this with you today and pray it will bless you too.

“God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another.”

1 Peter 4:10 NLT.