If our lives are truly hid with Christ in God, the astounding thing is that this hiddenness is revealed in all we do and say and write."
~ Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water
Author Flannery O’Connor said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I said.” That sentence capsulizes, in part, why I write. As a young girl, I was a bit awkward, quiet, introverted, and writing became my way of making sense of the world without and the world within and bringing harmony to both worlds. It was my way of taking the insanity of the world and bringing order and meaning to it (or escaping it temporarily). Writing was my way of searching the hills and valleys, scaling the mountains, exploring the caverns, excavating the mines of my soul to discover who I am. To find my place in the scheme of something larger and grander than myself—something that, at times, seemed senseless to me but was nonetheless magnificent and filled with wonder.
As a child, writing was my way of capturing the joy of birthday parties or Christmases, baking cookies with Mommy, going on excursions with Daddy, or processing the sorrow over the death of a pet, of being among the last to be chosen for a team, of wearing glasses at age eight, of being slightly overweight. Writing was my way of sealing the events of my life within my memory.
The teenaged me wrote to sort out emotions and empty myself of everything I felt I just couldn’t share with anyone else without being grossly misunderstood. It was a way of spewing out pent-up frustrations, disappointments, anger. A way to capture the moment the cute boy in class smiled at me or slipped me a note, or an upperclassman called me by name. To replay the first dance, the first kiss, the first love, as well as work through the pain of the first twinge of jealousy, the first argument, the first heartbreak. To spill out teen angst in a judgment-free zone. I wrote to give a record, to say I was here in this time and space, and this is how I interpreted my world.
Nicole Krauss probably said it best. She wrote: “Why does one begin to write? Because she feels misunderstood, I guess. Because it never comes out clearly enough when she tries to speak. Because she wants to rephrase the world, to take it in and give it back differently, so everything is used, and nothing is lost….”
I write because I love the melodious sound of pen gliding across paper. I love the feeling that fills me as I shape letters into words, words into sentences, forming thoughts that then take on a life of their own—a life and a legacy that I pray will long outlive me. I write because words float in my head and heart, wafting on the breeze of my imagination. I see them—bold and beautiful, soft and sweet, colorful. They float and fly and bounce off each other, looking to connect, to express meaning greater than they possess solitarily. They call to me, asking me to give them life, purpose, destiny.
I write, as Flannery O’Connor once said when asked why she writes, because I want to. But beyond that, because I must. It’s never been about making a lot of money. It has never been about publishing volumes of work or making a name for myself among the literary greats, or with the hope that one day I would be required reading, and high school juniors would dissect my work and extol my insight into the human condition.
I wrote then, and I write now because it is the way God has given me as not only my way to process my world but also as His way of communicating His heart of love with me and through me. I write to hear God speak. Writing is our way—the Father’s and mine—of communicating in the most intimate ways. It is our love exchange, our love song, our Father-daughter dance. And no one else can enter that space of deep intimacy.
I write because it is my sacred and authentic language of love.
From Finding Your F.L.O.W.: Answering the Writer's Call through Faith, Love, Obedience, and Worship
Copyright(c)2020 by Deborah A. Gaston.
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