One of the things I love about writing is it allows you to look into things that you may not understand – you may not feel like you have control over them. It feels vulnerable: I’m gonna write about this but I don’t really know what this means or how this works but I’m just gonna go into it anyway and try to stay present and responsive and try to tell the truth. And trust that somehow if I just start walking in this direction that this is gonna go somewhere. And I don’t know where it’s gonna go but I’m gonna trust that in some sense that I’m moving toward a face – that this does go somewhere and there is someone inviting me forward. And if that’s the case, then I’m going to be met in this at some point – and I am maybe already surrounded even though I don’t know it. I am maybe already held. – Matthew Clark, songwriter and musician

Hello. Here I am again. I am writing on this blog for the first time in almost a year. And the question that keeps dogging me is ‘why’? Why do I feel the need to produce words and send them out into the universe? What degree of arrogance makes me think my words are going to be helpful, necessary, or beautiful in the world? Is it the understandable but pitiably desperate ploy of the cancer patient attempting to wrench some meaning out of apparently meaningless suffering? Is it the control freak within grasping for agency over the narrative? Or perhaps a semi-narcissistic need to feel like a Shakespeare – to exploit my circumstances to finally get one or two readers for my inner ramblings. 

All of these are probably partially true. And these are the reasons why I haven’t written for almost a year. I didn’t want them to be driving.

And yet, there is something deeper still under the surface. Something innate to me – to my way of breathing. I wrestle myself into meaning within the written word. The Word, after all, spoke all of us into existence. And I think He still does, in the continuous act that is creation. I haven’t been able to stop writing, during my break from this blog. I haven’t been able to separate my self from the scratchings that devour my page – or rather – a collation of random pages in random notebooks that I keep on hand circulating between my handbag, my backpack, my bedroom, my study, my car. I write in order to pray. I write in order to think. I write to lament, to pour out my pain, to worship, to delight. I write in order to bleed out the messiness of my soul on a page so that I can see it and weep. And perhaps repent. And maybe even pause long enough to listen. 

And I realise that, perhaps, I have not been writing here because I wanted to wait until I was perfect – or at least inspirational. Until I’d figured something out. Until I had something that felt worth saying. But I am starting to think that perhaps I will never get to the place of arriving. And maybe that’s OK. So, here I go again. I’m back. And I’m going to try and share, with what truthfulness I can bear, the messiness of the journey. 

xo