Writing

I felt for the first time today that writing in and of itself does not satisfy. I don't mean in the self-expressive, passionate sense that I dwelled so much on yesterday, but in the realm of reality itself.

I truly believe that I am only satisfied in Christ. The satisfying element of writing to express myself is in how it connects me to the Holy Spirit and in turn to Christ Himself. So to the Spiritually alert Christian all roads may not lead to Rome, but to Christ. In the sense that Paul wrote of the permissible versus the beneficial, I enjoy writing to the extent that it benefits my spirit's intimacy with Christ.

So thank You, Lord, that I do not write in vain.

When I trust the Lord, I find that I am satisfied also to know dissatisfaction; there is some peace that comes with holding ever so loosely to this world. When I am tempted into finding satisfaction (perhaps fulfilment is more accurate) in this world, I sense that I am turning to face the future with Jesus behind me. I glance back at Him with the slightest struggle in my conscience, knowing somewhere inside that this can't be what I was made for. Yet I plug on convinced that I must join the elite who have found worldly success.

Now I think back and remember returning home from Kona, Hawaii where I spent a week with Rory at YWAM before we were married. I journaled like a mad woman, like the artists I described yesterday who had something so deep within that they would burst if it did not reach the surface. I journaled because the Lord was working within me and there was not conversation enough to satisfy. It had to be putting pen to paper, putting vision to actuality.

The Lord was stirring inside me a desire for hanging laundry out to dry on a clothesline--both literally and metaphorically. A clothesline to me represents poverty. He was stirring inside me a contentment with a future of poverty.

But not poverty as in a mercy's poverty who suffers for the Lord. Poverty as in one of my greatest fears. I knew poverty to mean misery as a young girl, and I wanted nothing of the misery I had experienced. In my simple understanding, I believed that wealth would dematerialize misery.

Untrue.

But fear is never based on reality, is it?

By reconciling me to using a clothesline, no, not reconciling, but rather freeing me to use a clothesline, I was able to release my hold on wealth as a means of satisfaction. In fact, wealth became dissatisfying as a means to fulfilment. When I see myself at the clothesline I am face to face with the Lord, not glancing back, but all around me.

If the Lord is now going to show me how dissatisfying it is to write (again not in the expressive sense, but in the career path to success sense), then let the freedom come! I am afraid because I have held tight to the notion that I should be successful and prove much of my education. But then again fear is never based in reality.