hola, folks.

Things have been pretty quiet here thanks to sickness+travel+ my week(ish) away at the Festival of Faith and Writing. I don’t think I could elaborate in words all the things I learned/people I hugged/ experiences I had… so I’m not gonna even try. For now, at least. Maybe later. 🙂

 

Either way, I’m back, and hopefully with a vengeance. If anything, FFW gave me some confidence in this writerly world that I’d lost over the last few months. Hopefully that means I’ll take to the pen (or keyboard) more often than not in this next season.

 

This week’s FMF word:

 

“O, if only I can succeed and be a poet and author and an artist. I must. O God, give me the determination. And the will to work, the talent. I wish I dared say genius. I will say it. Please give me genius.”

The words above are from Madeleine L’Engle’s private journals as a teenager in boarding school (printed in the book Becoming Madeleine, a biography by her granddaughters).

I was reading and was struck by this prayer. Madeleine had the desire, the passion to write. But she needed God to turn that desire into determination. Into the will, the resolve to do the work.

I need that, too. 

I have the desire to write amongst other things. But y’all, I have a tendency to lack discipline. I have a tendency to be lazy. My bed is awfully comfier than my writing desk. I struggle with getting it right and would rather instead not get it done. I struggle with doubting my worth as a writer and letting that convince me that I just shouldn’t write.

But I want, nay, need to write the things. Jen Hatmaker said in her FFW talks that we have to do the work.

Our writing is not going to just come out without doing the hard, holy work-- we have to pull it out, word for word, built on top of another until we create things the world needs to hear. Share on X

I need to drown my laziness with determination. I need the will to work to overtake my lack of discipline so I can do my work and say my words.

I need my desire to fuel the determination to get my voice and words on the page.

I need to get to work.

STOP.

Turn my lofty wishes and desires and dreams into tangible words and things, Lord. Give me the will to work instead of the laziness and complacency I use as an excuse. The world needs MY words. Help my unbelief here. Share on X

This song doesn’t have much to do with this topic, but since I started with a L’Engle quote I guess this song fits:

 

 

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