Writing for Christ

This blog is a commentary on an excellent book review and discussion by Andy over at A Mile From The Beach (see the link on the right). In his review of the book, Wild Goose Chase, by Mark Batterson, Andy mentions the author's description of several cages that we like to use to civilize our Christian impulses. In his latest missive, Andy talks about the Cage of Responsibility and how we can sometimes let work get in the way of our Christian walk, and also about knowing the difference between what God wants us to do and what we want to do in our own lives. This is what I'd like to talk about.

I was a writer before I really even knew how to write. I can't really explain the distinction to the non-writer, but I can use some analogies. You know the kid who always found sports easy and that you knew would eventually play professional sports when they grew up - well it was kind of like that for me.

Like most kids my age, I didn't particularly have any love for the written word or for reading. I wasn't precocious or some Bobby Fisher like genius. I was a normal kid. I liked to play with my friends. I liked to run around and kick balls and slide and swing and do all the things other kids like to do. And then, one day, October 31st, 1976, I sat down at a desk in my second grade classroom eagerly awaiting the opportunity to go outside in my Halloween costume and be in Halloween parade, and my teacher handed out a last minute writing assignment before the parade. We had to write, in our best penmanship, a one paragraph short story that began with the words, "It was a dark and stormy night..." I groaned with the rest of the kids at this awful busy work on this festive day, but I took out my pencil like all the rest and prepared to write.

What will I write? My mind suddenly filled with ideas so fantastic and so incredible that it was like finding that there was no back wall to the wardrobe I had just entered. I started writing... and writing... and writing... No, I didn't want to go out to the parade, I wanted to finish this story... and I wrote... and wrote... and yes, I did want to take it home and finish it. As is typical of my writing style to this day, I turned my one paragraph story into a seven page epic short story filled with adventure and rescues and battles and villains and heroes. And I haven't stopped writing since.

Its easy to believe in a calling when you are basically given a career in 2nd grade. I don't recall wanting to be a writer before that (and to be fair, I've always considered myself more of a story-teller, with an emphasis in writing) but I can tell you that I've never really had any other ideas for a career since. This might sound like a very uncomplicated path to live, but in fact, it has created exactly the sort of adventure filled life that Andy was blogging about in his book review. Being a writer might be something I'm good at, but it hasn't always made a lot of sense to my personal life.

There have been many times when I considered giving up writing. At one point at the end of High School when I was dramatically in love and ready to settle down and be like everyone else, I knew that my basic decision was between the girl and the writing - that I could not divide my passion equally. In the end, she required too much of me, and I found that I could not give it. I didn't want to have an ordinary life and in making accommodation's for my writing life, I probably ended up driving her away. Even then I was sharply aware of what my writing was costing me, but I couldn't give it up.

At the end of my initial college career, when I was ready to go on to grad school and get my Master's Degree in Anthropology so that I could make something of my life, the tug of being a writer caused me to reevaluate my decision. On the very last day of the deadline to submit the paperwork for post-graduate studies, I informed my adviser that I would instead be going back to San Francisco to pursue a writing career. This was a stupid decision as I was particularly good at being an anthropologist and would have easily excelled in grad school. But somehow I knew this was not the direction I was supposed to take.

I've always taken my writing gift as a responsibility not on the basis of pride in my work but simply because I've known since I was in second grade that I was supposed to be a writer. I've long known that I can't stop writing no matter what I do. I will write until the day I die. Someone put a hot coal to my typing fingers and the words continue to pour out in torrents. But I do often wonder why I was given this gift and whether anything I've done up to now has meant a difference to anybody else. Its not that I expect to be a great writer, so much, as that I expect my writing to make a difference - that if it really is a God ordained gift, that it must be useful to His purposes somewhere down the line.

Perhaps I will never be meant to know how my gift is to be utilized for His purposes. Either way, I will continue to write... and write... and write... until He tells me to stop. I can do nothing else. This is what I was ordained to do.