“What did you do today, Mom?” Nikki asked. “Oh you know, spin class, laundry, and stuff like that,” was my simple answer. “Why?” I ask myself. Why did I not tell my daughter, “Oh I finished chapter 30 in my book “On the Way.” “I spent an hour writing a silly rhyming poem about what my Father’s signature (Heavenly and earthly) means to me.” “I journaled a prayer to God.” Why is it so hard for me to orally verbalize why I need to write like I need my next glass of water?
I sit at my computer and time stops ticking away. I am Alice in the looking glass, but instead of freefalling, I soar on eagle’s wings to a land called Mercy and Amazing Grace. Writing is like stepping into Narnia. My wardrobe is my computer. I step through and into Beulah Land. God’s Glory cocoons me into His great love and my adventure begins.
I look out my office window. I don’t see the deadness of winter. I see Jesus sitting on the concrete slab of Jacob’s well. He’s waiting for her, a woman searching for worth. Her heart had grown cold because of self-inflicted pain. Here comes the desperate father clinging to the hope that Jesus will heal his son. I don’t see trees without spring time blooms. I see the Sea of Galilee. Peter and John, Andrew and James are cleaning their nets. Jesus climbs in their boat and says, “I will make you fisher’s of men.”
My thoughts return to my present day and Jesus reveals the relevance of His journeys. He still comes to restore our worth. Our heartache still moves Him. He still has power over time and space. He still moves mountains. He still knows how to bring peace into a world filled with hatred and violence.
It isn’t what I say in the words I write. It is the words He says to me when I spend time with Him. It is the lessons He teaches me through the parables He once spoke. My writing verse is, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT.
God has given me this writing tool. It is like a shovel. I use writing to dig through the dirt and boulder and rocks and concrete I have used to cover the eternity that He planted in my heart so long ago. Writing isn’t my only shovel. My tool shed is full. His Word is living and active and sharp enough to divide my soul and spirit. Our talks and walks in the cool of the day lead me to Eternity. God uses my husband, my kids and their spouses, my grandkids, my mom, my mother-in-law, my extended, my friends, my church, and others, to dig deep into my heart. All these are priceless gems in my treasure chest. Eternity for me is the color of each of them swirled together with the love of Christ. It shines with the gold of heaven and I want it to shine in me.
The world doesn’t make sense to me. At times I feel like the world is the Pinball Wizard and I am the pinball being bounced off the flapper of worry into the flapper of fear, back to a flapper of despair. I am just waiting for the machine to tilt. My time spent with God stops the pull of the pinball trigger.
God is my sanity in a world of crazy. Writing about my escapades into His Word is the stabilizing force the right this world on tilt.
Each of us have been given different tools to unearth the eternity planted in us. We all have our various wardrobes to step through, but on the other side of the wardrobe is Narnia and Jesus is and always will be The Lamb of God and The Lion of Judah.
This is my long winded answer to my daughter’s question, “What did you do today, Mom”
Good prose.