Although I am a Processor by nature and I tend to process best when writing, I admittedly avoid writing things until I feel they're "polished enough" to be shared. Because of this, I often have extensive stretches of time in between blogging, as well as between the pages of a book that I've been "finishing" for a long time now... a very long time. I'll even frequently edit at great length the texts I'm preparing to send out as if they are some great literary work of genius...they're not...and it's silly really.
I've been wanting to write, there is something, whether it's by pen and paper, or by the familiar click of the keyboard beneath my fingertips, that is soothing to me. Laying my internal thoughts out in front of me is often both incredibly gut-wrenching and simultaneously therapeutic. Sharing them so vulnerably with others, however, is a whole other level of terrifying... yet I also somehow find it necessary. Maybe not necessary for the "you" reading this, (whoever you are), but necessary for me.
See, by default and habit, I am a Hider. I may share some of me with the world, but not all. Like my writing, I prefer sharing the polished up version, the spell-checked and grammar-checked version, and the finitely edited version of me. That, I convince myself, is what people want. The problem with that is, although it may read well, it's not the whole story. And I, like you, am just as much the typos and incomplete sentences of my story, as I am the eloquently crafted paragraphs.
So I'm writing now, giving myself permission to be a bit unpolished. In doing so, I know I am risking the dreaded "red pen" of judgment. I believe from time to time we all have the fear that someone will take that pen to the pages of our lives and like a college English professor, begin the process of circling the mistakes that seem so blatantly obvious to them, grading and critiquing what is our own unique and beautiful God-journey. And the truth is, they might. But I need to write. Words are my instrument and expressing them is life to me.
To be honest, this chapter of my story, doesn't feel so fairytale-ish. Perhaps you can relate. Recently, I was in a head-on collision with some very harsh realities and as a Divine result, I'm raw and broken, weak and emptied. It's a gloriously painful place of refining. I can say I am certainly not alone, but can still FEEL very lonely here in this place where, more than anything, it MUST be God and I.
Truth be told, I am tempted every day... (go ahead and put your red pens down for a minute, I've already corrected myself for this far more harshly than you ever could. Oh yeah, I forgot to add that I too own one of those fancy red pens of judgment and have used it quite unfairly and all-too-liberally on myself as well. O.K. now, where were we? Ah yes, "I am tempted every day"... ) to run, to avoid, to "postpone" God's sovereign intervention to a later, more "convenient" date when I feel I'd be better equipped to handle all He's addressing. Seems only fair, as none of this was cleared by me and my schedule was already pretty full.
That said, I'd be lying if I tried to tell you that I haven't attempted (more than once) to figure out where God is hiding the remote control so I can hit the Fast Forward button on all of this and get to the "good part" of this page-turner of His.
And that's the ugly, unpolished, unedited truth.
And sure, even now as I prepare to hit "publish", I'd still prefer to present the "ready to print" final draft of myself to the world, who wouldn't? But I also see the beauty in unashamedly allowing others to view the flawed, scribbled throughout, authentic work in progress.
And perhaps...just maybe by doing so... some of you may find the courage to share your rough-draft self with the world too ...
