dedicated to A.W.
I think at some point, a lot of Christians will feel like they’re being led to something only to end up gravely mistaken. Or perhaps more accurately, God sends them to what turns out to be a rest stop as opposed to the destination they thought they were heading to.
You think God is telling you one thing only to realize down the line you completely misheard Him, and end up more confused than you started.
But there are things that God puts on your heart that leave no room for guessing. There are callings, instincts and urges that are impossible to doubt or misinterpret.
And for me, writing is one of them.
It’s never felt like a hobby or something I happened to be good at, but something grafted into my DNA while I was in the womb.
Since I was in elementary school I remember coming alive during English exercises as vividly as I remember making up headaches and stomach aches to try to get out of math.
I don’t ever remember learning how to write, and at my previous job where I often helped train writers at our agency, I remember struggling trying to distill my intuition into something formulaic and teachable.
That’s not to say I look back on everything I’ve ever written and beam with pride, that I don’t think I have plenty of room to grow and improve, or that I’m not constantly challenged.
But that God made me this way, and the older I get, the less random it feels.
I think the gifts God gives us are for a reason, and that ultimately, we’re supposed to use them to serve Him.
And I wish that were as effortless and uncomplicated as it can sound on the surface.
We’d like to think of it as something as simple as an athlete acknowledging Him after a championship victory — and of course, there’s nothing wrong with that — but a much more realistic image is that of an athlete risking sponsorships, brand deals and multimillion dollar contracts to stand by His Truth.
Serving God with the gifts He gave you is more likely than not going to cost you something.
In my own case, I never particularly looked forward to dissecting my emotional distress in real time to try to extrapolate meaning from it that could be made useful to others.
No matter how many times I’ve forced myself to be “vulnerable,” I don’t know that it ever gets less humiliating.
It was one thing when it was a long, dramatic Instagram caption about feeling chubby at the beach, but it’s another when the pain is existential, a resolution was inconceivable and God seemed nowhere in sight.
In the fallout of an especially excruciating series of events, I went a full quarter of the year without publishing anything.
It was something like I’d mentioned at the start of this, where I thought God was taking me in one direction only for Him to pull the most abrupt U-turn I’d ever endured.
As afraid and abandoned as I felt as it was happening, I realized in hindsight that I never could have gotten where I was supposed to be without the detour that initially felt cruel and meaningless.
Eventually, in the midst of my agony and lethargy, I felt tugs on my heart that I couldn’t ignore. I felt compelled to put pen to paper (or more literally finger to key) and say what I believed needed to be said, and no one else was saying for me.
It was a eulogy for the country we used to be and a confession of guilt about the family friend I didn’t visit before she died in February. A memorial to Laken Riley in March. And three more essays in April that waded into gender wars, God’s timing, femininity and how Christians treat whores.
I was slowly but surely finding my way back into a rhythm.
I wrote in a way I never had; furious with God, fighting desperately to hold onto my faith like I was trying to catch rain water with cupped hands.
I didn’t just write about my personal life or struggles. I still had plenty to say about what was going on in the world and online.
But that was the year God took just about everything from me, and gave me intimacy with Him that I never could have known otherwise.
And I wrote about it in real time; in desperate, painstaking, pathetic detail.
More often than not, I felt like I was writing into the void.
I felt like I was embarrassing myself for no tangible benefit, pouring my heart out onto a page that no one would ever read.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was what I was supposed to be doing. So I continued.
For years, I was stuck at 5,000 followers on Instagram, and was lucky if 40 of them saw anything I shared.
One friend would consistently show up though. I could almost always count on her “like” on a blog post.
And I was glad she was reading them, but on social media I think it’s easy to take your friends for granted. Like, you notice more when they aren’t engaging than when they are. And I was so discouraged by the metrics and all of the people it seemed I’d never be able to reach with my ideas that I’d become completely unconcerned with the few I did.
But in hindsight, that one friend may have been the only person God wanted me to reach.
I think I had a year from hell…until I think about what she went through.
What happened to her was actually from the fiery pits. What happened to me was from Skid Row. Or maybe Dearborn, Michigan.
But finally, after living the Book of Job reimagined by Lifetime, things are finally turning around for her.
I genuinely can’t think of anyone that deserves it more.
But it recently dawned on me how much comfort and relief she might have found before things got better; seeing someone wrestling with the Lord with a rage and resentment that she could recognize, but repeatedly returning to Him and ultimately surrendering to Him.
And I began to understand how God could use me, and why He left the 99 for the 1.
This time last year, I had roughly 1/10th of the followers I have now.
I won’t lie; I’m excited to finally be seeing progress. But the bigger the number gets, I realize the less it matters.
My ego wants my writing to touch as many people as possible but my soul knows that one is more than enough.
We’d like to imagine our gifts and passions with earthly riches, recognition and rewards.
But when we submit what God gave us back to Him, what actually happens is often a lot more humbling than we might have envisioned.
If I had more power over the course my life has taken, I’m sure I wouldn’t have suffered as much as I did, I’m sure I wouldn’t have written about it, and I’m sure my platform would have grown much faster and much earlier.
But I genuinely believe God gave me an emotional depth and a way with words that consoles the brokenhearted, whose anguish is too often dismissed and belittled by Christians whether or not they mean to. I think He gave me a trial I didn’t know I or my faith would survive to bring me the closest to Him I’ve ever been, and show the people exactly where I once was a path to Him in their pain.
And I thank Him for it.
what do you think?