Why Write?
There’s a prevailing theme I’ve found in life, and it goes by the name of absurdity. Without a formula to a successful, painless existence, I’ve found there is only lottery.
Blessing granted and suffering imparted. And sometimes if we're honest it seems that God decides our lot based on plucking the petals of a flower—I bless them, I bless them not. Suffering is inevitable for the Christian, and though our lives have eternal meaning, they remain as vapor and mere breath. The absurdity of life is thus that each breath we breathe is an exhaust of the life within us, the wasteful byproduct of a life well-or-unwell-lived. We take joys where we can find them—in an autumnal breeze or the blue of a robin’s egg, in births and in growths, in friendships and in feasts. But for me, I find joy in words and in telling stories, both my own and those of ages past. I enjoy it because it helps me to make sense of the otherwise senseless.
When the ecclesiastical teacher refrains that he, "sought to find delightful sayings and write words of truth accurately," he attests to the importance and privilege of writing wisely, truly, and beautifully. When he remarks that wise words are cattle prods and sharp nails, he speaks of the benefit of the written word, guiding and ushering and teaching even the most stubborn. Words are the enjoyment of the teller and the necessity of windswept readers.
But writing also fosters discovery. There is plenty I know now that I would not know had I not sat, thought, and pined restlessly for answers, feverishly typing as I processed. Seeing the strangeness in my own spheres—the work of the devil, the work of my sin, and the happenstance of living in this thing we affectionately call 'life'—has compelled me to search out answers in the white of a Word Document, expressing the experiences that can only be described as, well, absurd.
I've been rendered to grief when I feel as though I can't see the Lord through the fog of life. I've been reduced to tears, wondering if God could be, would be, vindictive toward me. I've spent days staring at a carrot in front of me—is it stringed-up and taunting? Is it leading me somewhere purposeful? Often I don't come out with answers that satisfy me in those heart-wrenching moments. But I do come out knowing God's goodness and supremacy over the peculiarity of life.
In life’s strangeness, in her ups and downs, I have found that words bring solidarity amid loneliness, and consolation amid loss. The permanence of words etches in proverbial stone the stories that belong to each of us; the stories we’ve been gifted by God. We weep with the weeping and rejoice with the rejoicing through the read and written word. We find unity where the bondage of division lays hold when we share the things in life that simply don't make sense. Because at the end of it all, none of our lives really make sense, at least the parts of our lives that aren't inextricably tethered to our permanent hope in Jesus Christ. The spouses, the children, the jobs, the illnesses, the talent, or the lack of any such things are, it seems, indiscriminately doled out. Or maybe it only seems to be indiscriminate from our small eyes.
This sort of obscurity that we have toward seeing our earthly circumstances is why I write. I write so that we might relish in the absurdity of life not run away from it. I write so that affections grow for Christ and His bride. I write to tell the story of the partnership that we, as Christians, have with absurdity—that this obscurity is not opposed to hope, rather it is a companion to it. I write because the written Word of God has poked and pushed me like the teacher’s prod and nails, because I know words have the power to change, and because I know God has gifted us with them to enact that change. I write to make sense of life in a winsome, wise, and beautiful way that allows each of us to feel less alone in the absurdity of it all.
