Fearless Friday: The Stories We Tell Ourselves

“Don’t write any more?” Instantly, I am gutted by these words. That’s like asking me not to breathe. Writing for me is what squats are to those crazy Olympian athletes: Necessary, essential, required.

Fearless Friday: The Stories We Tell Ourselves by Holly C Wyse

“What if it turns out that I am a one hit wonder?” The self pity is oozing into all my syllables and words, my fear barely disguised.

“Then maybe you will be a classic song like I Get Knocked Down by TubThumping,” my husband says while folding a T-shirt in our room.

I throw a pillow at his head. I need support, not another one of his jokes. “I’m serious.”

And I am.

I am waffling on whether or not to write a book again. I wrote one once. In theory, I could do it again.

Except that…the last time I wrote a book, my life completely fell apart. Disastrously so.

“Then don’t write any more,” My husband passes the pillow back to me, but in shock I forget to catch it. It hits me in the face.

“Don’t write any more?” Instantly, I am gutted by these words. That’s like asking me not to breathe. Writing for me is what squats are to those crazy Olympian athletes: Necessary, essential, required.

“You can write. Or not. It’s your choice,” he picks the pillow up and gently nudges me. “Just pick one choice so you can stop driving me crazy.”

I give him my wild eyed stare. I am driving him crazy? Imagine living in my head?! It’s a place that is in a constant tug of war about stepping out creatively and daring bravely with my art.

On one side you have the Pros.

You wrote a book! It won a publishing contest! Then it won an award! You can write!

Then you have the loud and obnoxious Con side:

Big deal, everyone is writing a book these days. Maybe no one really entered that contest. Maybe there was no one else to give an award to. Plus, you wrote it five years ago. Five. You knew nothing about writing then. It’s a miracle you wrote complete sentences.

The closer I get to stepping out and writing another book, the louder the Con voice has been getting. The cons are out to distract me. They are my built-in defense mechanism to stop me from what I am afraid of being:

Vulnerable.

To write–at least the kind of writing I want to do- means opening up about the thoughts that go on in my head (which, as we have clearly established a few paragraphs ago, can be a precarious place at times). It means sharing the observations that I make on life and the way that I see the world. That could be…disastrous.

Or it could be liberating.

It could be life-giving.

It could impact and change someone else’s world.

It could change mine.

N.R. Hart said that ‘as a writer you try to listen to what others aren’t saying…and write about the silence.”

And that’s the thing, I see and hear so many things. Too much, maybe. I see the weighted look of my friend with cancer giving me a hug and hoping it’s not our last one. I hear the awkward silence that a husband gives when his wife insults him in front of friends. I can’t miss the tell tale signs of insecurity when the new girl is desperately trying to fit in to a group of established friends.

And…I see the sweet slip of hope that comes into my friend’s eyes when we laugh about the weight loss diet that cancer has caused. I hear my husband’s laugh when I come home and tell him I am proud of him. The encouragement of women is tangible as they expand their circle to include one more.

I see redemption everywhere I go. A story that is in the midst of pain and on the cusp of redemption. Some stories are at the start, others in the messy middle.

I see redemption everywhere I go. A story that is in the midst of pain and on the cusp of redemption. Some stories are at the start, others in the messy middle. Click To Tweet

And I can’t keep that to myself any more. I can no longer observe it.

I can no longer wonder if all I have is one book inside of me. I must discover if I have twelve or twenty or more.

Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves and told them to, “Be still.”

I tell the Cons to be still as well.

My Heavenly Father invites me to, “Be still and know.”

I choose to be still and know the Truth: that God spoke creation into existence with words, and when I create life with words I am being just like my Father.

I can stop telling myself the story of failure.

I can stop telling myself that disaster will ensue if I risk again.

I can pick up my pen and tell stories of redemption. Not for awards, although they may come. Instead, I can tell redemption stories because they point to the One who can redeem us all.

The irony is not lost on me.

In the act of telling those stories, my own is redeemed.