I’ve spent over a year consciously choosing gentleness and patience with myself. I’ve poured myself into healing. For a while, it felt like wound care, and still occasionally does. Mostly it feels like rebuilding now. I feel like a puzzle, and I happen to love puzzles. But I feel like a puzzle with entire sections missing. I have the picture. I know what goes there. I know what’s missing. The pieces are scattered and hidden and broken. The analogy breaks down a bit here, because although the pieces can be found, putting them back in looks much more like growing them back rather than a simple click into place. Plus, the pieces will never grow back the same and I must accept that.
These were musings in a conversation with myself. I have many such conversations through the hours, and today the dialogue in my head focused on the multiple years of writer’s block. I sit here thinking once again about this healing process, wondering when the Writing piece will grow back, and inevitably wondering if it can.
What if that piece doesn’t grow back? What if the rest of it takes too much of me and I can’t put that piece back in?
At an obnoxious volume, these questions cut in on my other thoughts. It was immediately followed by a calm voice.
“Write this down.”
So, I am. I came here with both determination and tears. I opened a blank post and started typing because the only way for the writing not to be gone is if I am writing. It took eight minutes just to write the first two sentences, and I’m still displeased with them. There is no flow or rhythm as I type these words. It is nothing like how I know writing to feel. But I’m writing, so I’ll take it.
Because, what if it’s gone? The possibility is relatively new to my mind. Only in recent months have I started to doubt, and think in terms of “if” instead of “when.” I ache to write a story. Knowing why I have writer’s block does not save me from the frustrated sadness of it. I miss the thrill of turning a snippet of an idea into a short tale. I miss meeting new characters and creating adventures for them. I miss the joy. I miss the way my whole self is engaged and enlivened as a story flows onto my paper. Writing now, if any words come at all, feels awkward and unfamiliar.
It’s that calm, quite voice that keeps me going. It’s the only one that can tune out the loud discouragement.
“Write it down.”
The Lord doesn’t give up on me. Never. Maybe I can’t grow back the Writing piece. He can grow it back, though. He can grow it anew.
Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.
Ephesians 3:20, RSV
Carrie In Writing 