A Writer's Prayer From "The Valley of Vision"

If you follow me on facebook or twitter, you might know my love and affection for a little paperback, first published in 1975, called The Valley of Vision - A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. I try to share a few lines every Monday in a #mondaydevotion.

We have so much to learn from the spiritual giants who came before us. It was their wise and timeless words that guided my thoughts in a right and fitting prayer over my writing today.

Thy cause, not my own, engages my heart. 
Not my name, my reputation, my followers, my talent, or my success. Neither is perfection my cause, because I don't have it in me to make the story perfect. It will be full of mistakes, theological and artistic. The world may scorn it, but to the one who's eyes are open, or whose eyes are soon to be opened, it will make the Lord and his dealings with his people something beautiful. That's my hope, my prayer, and the cause which engages my heart.

And I appeal to thee with greatest freedom to set up thy kingdom in every place where Satan reigns.
There is no time and no place like the one I'm living in right now. No freer citizen of an earthly kingdom existed. I have so much time, so much access to information, so many avenues to proclaim his name, and so much freedom to do it without fear of persecution.

Glorify thyself and I shall rejoice, for to bring honour to thy name is my soul desire.
Lord, make this so in my heart, which is so dark, so bent toward my own glory. Destroy my pride so these words are always on my lips, so my joy is in you alone.

I adore thee that thou art God, and long that others should know it, feel it, and rejoice in it.
Lord, make my heart to ache for the lost, for my soul to weep over them, for my grief to be inconsolable. Let that be what drives me finish this work.

...To the eye of reason everything respecting the conversion of others is as dark as midnight, but thou canst accomplish great things.
My words, my story, are as refuse to much of the world. I am incompetent at best to tell the story I long to tell, and have it be used to soften hard hearts. Yet you can accomplish great things through feeble hands if you desire. It is only for me to stay faithful to the task and lay it at your feet to use or discard as you will.

The cause is thine and it is to thy glory that men should be saved.
Not mine. Not mine. Heaven forbid I would try to rob you of your glory.

Lord use me as thou wilt, do with me what thou wilt, but, O, promote thy cause, let thy kingdom come, let thy blessed interest be advanced in this world!
How good of God to put a version of this prayer on my ignorant, faltering lips many years ago when I first began to write. And how sweet of him to set my eyes on these words, written and preserved by men much smarter, holier, and closer to the Lord than me. How I praise him for this, and for his word which never changes.

Give me to grasp for multitudes of souls, and let me be willing to die to that end.
Can I truly make these words my own? Do I even understand them, after a lifetime of worshiping, working, praying, and writing whatever I please, without fear of persecution in America? The people whose story I long to tell were willing to die for this. Am I? If the world grows dark, and some wicked ruler puts my neck in a noose for the words I write, would I say, "Yes, those are my words."? Lord grant me the courage I require should that day come.

And while I live let me labour for thee to the utmost of my strength, spending time profitably in this work, both in health and in weakness.
O, how I need him every hour, every minute, every second, to stop my mind from being distracted, and my hands from being idle. There is so much in this world that seeks to destroy my productivity. Let me labor, Lord, to my dying day, stringing words together, crafting stories which honor you, if it pleases you to have me do it. And if it doesn't, take this longing from me, and set my heart on another.

Amen.

Why I Write: Fiction

This is the second installment in my summer series: Why I Write. Today I'll tell you why I write made-up stories about made-up people with made-up problems.

I wrote about the Power of a Story for my other blog, Quills and Inkblotts. The purpose of this piece today isn't to argue the merits of fiction. Rather, to explain why I choose to write it, or more accurately, why I need to write it.

I love conversation. Not idle chit-chat. I hate that. If small-talk were a sport, I'd be the last one picked for the team. Give me an interesting topic (and an interested listener) and I'll win the Olympics of conversation. But, put me in a room with doughnut holes and coffee and five minutes until church starts, and I turn into Socially Awkward Penguin.

Then Facebook was invented. It's a blessing and a curse, isn't it? I've had some great conversations there. I can respond at my leisure, after thinking about what I want to say. I can read over my words a couple times to make sure my meaning is clear (and my typos are fixed). In this way, it's a great tool for the socially awkward to engage in meaningful conversation.

Until it isn't.

A few months ago I came across a wonderful, thought-provoking article on the Magna Carta in the Wall Street Journal. You can read it if you want to (please do!). Turns out, last summer was its 800th anniversary--who knew?

I thought about that article all day, the implication of the document on me as an American, as a descendant of Anglo-Europeans, who are so often thought of as the oppressors by modern...let's say "intellectuals," and how that thinking came about over the last hundred years or so.

I shared the link to the article on Facebook, but not until after carefully planning what I would say about it. I didn't want to come across as a snobbish know-it-all. I genuinely wanted my little Facebook community to be as intrigued as I was by it, to read it, to form their own thoughts, and to have a conversation about it. Of course, no one did. It turns out people have lives!

Having a constantly churning mind and no one to share its ruminations with can be lonely and stifling.

Enjolras had his men of the ABC Society.

William Wilberforce had the Claphamites.

Hannah More had her Bluestocking Group.

I need an outlet too, a more reliable source of conversation than fickle Facebook. So I write fiction. I hold conversations with myself about the beauty of the Pilgrims, about their faith, about God's faithfulness to them, about what it's like to grow up with a father who doesn't easily show love, about being a girl in a patriarchal society, about love, about grief, about friendship, about having faith in a God who feels very far away.

And the voices in my head do answer. They have comebacks I would never have the guts to say. Sometimes they scream and cry. Sometimes they laugh and enjoy each other's company. Sometimes they fall in love.

Sometimes I don't know what I know, or how I feel until the voices have had their say. In some ways it's better than engaging real life people who grow bored, or get offended, or misbehave. The voices are enough. They do more than sustain me--they energize me. They keep me sharp, focused, interested in many things. They demand knowledge gained by research, and excellence gained by revision.

When no one in real life cares about the Magna Carta, or King James, or religious persecution in the 17th Century, or Reformation theology, or being a lovesick teenage girl, the voices do. They care because these things are their fictional lives.

These things are my life. Because I need to have these conversations. Because I write fiction.

"For I am full of words; the spirit within me constrains me. Behold my belly is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins ready to burst. I must speak, that I may find relief."

Job 33:18-20

The Big D: Our First Skype Fight

Sometimes I love FB. It's my main line of communication with my hubby. It has been a great way to get to know new people at my FDS and I've also been able to keep in touch with friends back home. I can post a pic of my 7 year old with her just-pulled tooth between her fingers instead of having to call all the grandmas individually. It's great. But sometimes I believe that FB is the freaking spawn of Satan and has no earthly business distracting us from our real lives with virtual pseudo-crap that masquerades as real life. But I digress.

 My husband and I fling arguments back and forth for a while on FB chat but he has to go to work and I have to take my daughter to art class so hours go by without responses and a conversation that should have taken 20 minutes and been done with dragged out ALL DAY LONG. That is not good for women--to stew all day on stuff like that. It makes petty little things grow and fester into malignant, all-consuming problems. Yes, it was a horrible, horrible day.

So, here's what I did and why I'm telling you guys about this. I've been around long enough to know the destruction that can be wrought during a fight in which the words you use are typed/written instead of spoken. Once you click "send" he can read your words over and over again. He can read in between the lines and infer things you didn't mean. You can never take the words back, even if you apologize and say you didn't mean it--the words are still THERE, hurting each other for internet eternity. So I thought on that and prayed before every single reply I wrote to him. There were some messages that I typed while my heart was thumping and smoke was pouring out of my ears that I deleted and started over because it was more important to me that he understand why I was ticked than to just know that I was ticked. I could have called him names (and believe me I wanted to) but I didn't. I didn't want to pretend nothing was wrong either, so I kept my words honest and focused on me instead of accusing him (he didn't hurt me intentionally and I always knew that even though it didn't diminish how hurt I was). It wasn't about venting or harping at him either. That's not communication. I tried really, really hard, as mad as I was, to keep an even temper while I was writing and tried to anticipate his reaction to what I was saying. Honestly, I didn't know for sure. He said he thought he was being funny and meant nothing by it. I could have been makings worse but hoped I wasn't.

And you know what? I woke up this morning to a lengthy, apologetic, sappy, romantic message and I wrote him one right back. Can I tell you part of what he said? It makes me smile.  "I'm waiting to come home to you because you are the most beautiful woman I know. You are the mother of my children, the love of my life, my best friend, the person I would die for." I would have rather had hot make-up sex, of course, but this wasn't a bad substitute. And now we have those loving messages full of kind words that we can look at over and over, for all internet eternity.

Love prospers when a fault is forgiven, but dweling on it separates close friends. Proverbs 17:9.