A Pen's Justification.

I'm being forced to pause.

I don't like this.

I have to write now.

Why is it so hard to focus, to make myself do what I love?

I fear I'm riddled with fear.

And then I want to give up altogether and go bake a cake. Or wish for the umptienth time that I didn't have to worry about not being in full-time employment. Or go worry about something else insignificant. Or look at pretty blogs.

I realised, at about 1:00 am this morning (as you do) why so much of my journaling feels fake to me. It's cause I hide. I hide what occupies my brain the most. And most of the time, it's fears. Donald Miller mentions that Jesus commanded us over TWO HUNDRED times 'Do not fear'. And still I succumb to its paralysing voice.

So I check facebook (yup). I wonder what I'll make for dinner. I use the toilet. I doubt that I'm loved. I check my emails. I pop out to run an errand. I fritter away the hours.

My soul shrinks, my faith diffuses into thin air, and I am numbed. 

And then the guilt rises, as I try to justify what I've done with my day.....that never goes over well. I chide myself and I ask, 'What SHOULD I be doing?' I try harder.  

A Pen's Justification

There is a knotted thread

within my hand;

it binds my fingers together.

But my head?

It hurts for all the wool

tangled

mangled.

I try

raging

pulling

to explain, explore, the ache.

The ache of inadequacy

of confused, believed fallacy.

My perception

time and again rebuked

by a sense of duty.

Will my pen ever stop

trying to justify my being?

Do you ever try harder? To cover up, let go, sweep away, forget, to build, to create,....to justify? I look inside me for The Answer, The Meaning.

Inside me....

....and I wonder why fear seems to grip onto my heart and why I can't hear Your voice in amongst my endless babble and fretting.

Inexplicably, this morning (having woken up tense and under-slept) I finally listened to the Voice that had been whispering 'read John' for the past couple of days. And I read these verses....

'In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through Him all things were made;

without Him nothing was made

that has been made.

In Him was life

and that life was the light of men.

The Light shines in the darkness,

but the darkness has not understood

or overcome

it.'

John 1.

I can't claim to know what this means. What it means intellectually or for my own life....but I read it and my bones feel vigorous again. My heart somehow has courage. Life is seeping back into me. A fight is rising within....I will not stand idly by as the Story is ripped from my life. It will not be stolen from me. For the Light, Jesus, the Word is dwelling with me. Within us.

Challenge for myself? 

Let the Word of Christ dwell RICHLY within me, and then maybe the words that spill from my own pen will feel less like a justification, less of a covering up,....and more of an act of freedom, more of a joy.