Like Water on Stone

You, the writer are a spiritual instrument. If you allow yourself to write consistently, you will become more and more finely tuned. You will become more and more fluid and expressive. As you become more fluid and expressive, you will become more vibrant, more vital, more alive.

- Julia Cameron, The Write to Right

This is the thing which I have avoided all along: making too much of my writing. Through the years, I have relentlessly turned aside thoughts that I might have a gift -- not given to me but to others. It's easier to think of my writing as something I do on the side, after everything else.

But writing on the side, as an afterthought, is extremely limiting. It means the writing will never develop. For there will always be something, someone, who is more important.

This has been my job description for life: I take care of people. I'm a nurturer. I help before I realize I've started. This is good. It's love in action. There are many hurting people. So many, in fact, that I could help all day every day for a long life and never reach them all.

And never reach any other goal.

I'm more comfortable making other people important. It's the clear and straight path of serving. But I'm seeing that it can become a chronic setback when it is overused, when I am not taking care of the instrument I hope to be in the Lord's hands.

Writing practice is part of taking care of the instrument. The disciplines Julia Cameron suggests are sensible. Footwork, containment, daily practice, morning pages -- these all give the gift a chance. They give the writer a chance. I can see how sensible they are. But still I struggle.

For me, at this time, having raised my family and been in ministry for over 20 years, trusting God means trusting that he designed me with a purpose. It means trusting his gift and giving it a chance.

Did he make me so that I see fire in sunsets, hear symphonies in rainstorms, and sense the Spirit moving across a heart like water spilling over stone? Did he give me an eye which sees connections between concrete objects and abstract ideas -- which draws lines of resemblances between them?

Did he place within my soul an intensity in the way I perceive the written word? It flows over my senses and sinks like water into sand. I need a daily watering.

When I write it down, I live a different life. I have proved it again and again. The words make me, as I make them. They make what otherwise could not have been.

Repeatedly they have washed over me and through me, carving me like water on stone. I have been shaped by them. I have been softened. I am being sculpted into an instrument by the master craftsman. He knew what he was doing when he chose his tool.

It is my heart, after all, who most needs the Spirit spilling like water over it.

This was written as part of a book study at High Calling Blogs. You can go there today for the latest discussion of The Write to Right by Julia Cameron.

Photograph of Lemon Falls, Pisgah National Forest, copyright 2010 by Cassandra Frear.