The Writer’s Most Important Tool {Day 13}

“It’s not fair. To be told that my heart valve is so narrow. Severe stenosis. 

The cancer treatment me that kept alive has done so much damage. I continue to be haunted by it.

What saved my life is now killing me.

I am so scared. I just want it to go away.

But, I KNOW this, this is the life God has for me.

The love that He redeemed me with is the love that He holds me with. He will not let me go.

I don’t get to choose.

I just get to live this life that I have been given with total reckless abandon.

This is what I want to do – to make every moment count.

This is how I will do it – to seek Christ in every moment.”

This is an excerpt of words I scribbled one morning this week in my journal as the wind chased the leaves off the ash tree just outside my bedroom door. As my little one put on her backpack and swimming goggles on top of her blond wispy waves just tumbling down and black patent high heel dress shoes that my Grandma once wore and she came clip-clapping into my room to find me with tears bursting forth.

“What Mama? What, Mama?” She climbed up beside me to comfort. Made her way right onto my lap and into my heart all over again, snuggled her little body against mine.

The phone rang and the moment was gone forever.

“The diary/Journal is probably the most important tool in your writing creatively. From it, you can continue, through rereading and appraisal, to learn more about yourself and God. You can see your life as it develops and grows. You can see how your writing begins to improve, because you learn to write BY WRITING! . . .

You learn to write Your Style BY WRITING! . . .

You learn with hoursandhoursandhourshoursandhoursandhours spent WRITING! . . .

Begin where you are with who you know, what you see, what you perceive . . . Writing creatively (which really means living . . . thinking . . . observing creatively) begins with the everyday . . .

As you dig into yourself, and into your known world, you will be able to write so that when you share your words, others will read with a shock of recognition: Hey! That’s how I felt when . . . I just didn’t know now to day it!

The requires a depth of honesty that is painful . . . but imperative . . .

[The Journal] provides you with the opportunity for full emotional release, the practice of writing as rapidly as possible, the struggle to capture every fleeting thought regardless of how roughly it is structured. The Journal is the storehouse of the essence of who and why you are and from it, you will gather “stuff” for your writing all of your life.”

~Ruth Vaughn, 'Write to Discover Yourself'

This is part of a series, linking up with Nester, for the month of October.

You will find the rest of the series, Write to Discover Yourself: My Story His Glory, here. 

It is a series of posts of sharing what I am learning in Ruth Vaughn’s book, 'Write to Discover Yourself'.