.And Yet I Write.

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It ebbs and flows through us all. It is a part of us. None of us can escape it, and we all love a good one. It's the link from the beginning of time, and we all live it every single day - a story. Each of us is inside one, and our one connects with his one and her one and the ultimate One. We are all story tellers, proclaiming our story with paint, with pencil, with a keyboard, with lips, with life, with the stage, with a podium, in front of a classroom, in front of our children, in churches, backyards, grocery stores, and songs. Our story is ever-changing, growing, developing, and maturing. We were born to tell our story, because the broken pieces of our story are exactly what He uses to make His story known.

For almost eight years now, I have used blogging as the biggest medium to story tell. I am discovering how many different pages I have turned in these eight years. I have been broken, side-tracked, stretched, redeemed, wronged and wrong. Looking back, some of the conclusions that I came to in telling my story, would be very different today if I were to write it again. However, we all proclaim what we know, and we tell the story from the perspective we have in that moment. We are all in a process of change. Life is not static. We cannot live out our story, and come out on the other side the exact same character as we were when we entered the story. It's not possible.

There is power in a story, but sometimes it is intimidating and exhausting to tell it. Sometimes we feel as if we are competing with all of the stories around us, and they can be so loud and so very good. Sometimes ours seems weak and unworthy, and we wonder if our voice should even be inserted into the noise. Because sometimes our voice changes, and the story that we told so boldly and so surely before has changed. So why bother, if we are only going to continue to grow in our understanding and perspective of life? Somedays I want to call it quits, and find another medium, because this one collects the changes too easy and stacks them up and makes me squirm at the me of yesterday. Did I really believe that and write that? I don't even remember those words or feelings or opinions. And yet they are all weaved into my story, and without them my story wouldn't be authentic. 

His grace redeems every broken bit of this story, every changed idea and thought, and He uses this tiny offering to mesh with someone elses story. I have seen it over and over and over. So, on the days when I want to shut the laptop, perhaps I do, and recently I have, but maybe I don't, and maybe in the broken, messed up parts of this story - when I write too certainly and heavily - maybe just maybe His mercy shrouds it and buffers it. Because I have seen these words here, ones that now I may cringe at and may not ever remember feeling so passionate about, fill up an empty place inside of  someone else. I have seen God use my inadequacies, in telling this story, in ways that only He ever could.

Every time I step away from this space, take a deep breath, reevaluate if this matters, I am gently nudged back. Every single time He brings me back, and whispers write. Just write, with all of your heart, soul, and mind. Write from your heart and from your now. Because I want to be perfected in all of Your weaknesses. Splay yourself open and write out your soul, because it is there where redemption in the brokenness will be seen. It is there where I will be seen. It's your story, and it matters, because I am writing it. I am the one changing it - and changing you. 

So, I just write. My fingers fly, my heart races. It is exhilarating  It is what I am meant to do. I was created to share in words written down and bled out on a page or a screen. They are not the most beautiful or the best. Someone else does this better. Sometimes I am sure, and sometimes I am shaky. Sometimes the story changes, and sometimes pages need to be ripped out. And yet, I write, because this is mine to share. These words are a part of me and and a part of this moment.

This is my offering, my worship, my heart.