The Need to Write

I feel like my life is a whirlwind.

The mornings begin earlier than I’d like and end well past my breaking point. Most days are hardly memorable, a flurry of drive here, speak there, type this and review that. Though they’re all different, they all feel the same.

Lately they’ve been ending with me in the driveway, head in my hands, sobbing deep and endless tears that I can’t seem to control, searching desperately for answers to questions I don’t even seem able to put into words.

An older friend calmly told me, “You’re 23. It comes with life breakdowns. A lot of them.”

But Little Miss Fix It over here doesn’t like that. She’d rather set her alarm earlier to run, or stay up later to read, or promise herself for the ten thousandth time that she will pray before gossiping… again.

I feel like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, that everything is meaningless: all of our toils and troubles, our joys and victories.

But this afternoon, something changed.

An old friend from the Race contacted me. Though her message was trivial, it reminded me of her and all of the serious conversations we had had during those long days and late nights. This time last year, she was challenging me as I went through a similar season, where my tears seemed to outnumber my smiles and I was convinced my life was over.

Natalie, she challenged, again and again, you need to be journaling.

Journal. Write. Let the words unleash on the paper or screen or even dirt on the ground. Let loose your thoughts and emotions and prayers, let the deepest parts of yourself be known, even if only to God.

Because in that release, there is healing.

In that release, there is freedom.

In that release, all of the creativity that God put in me as He knit me together in my mother’s womb is set free on a waiting world- a world seeking to know their Creator.

In that release, I get to be God’s voice to His beloved, desperate creation.

I can sit outside in tears, or I can stand before mankind as an ambassador of Christ.

There is a time to live and a time to die, as Solomon wisely noted. This is my time to live.

And I’m not going to waste it.