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Brenda Bradford Ottinger

Encouraging Women to Live Rooted in the Sacred

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Future Ink

I’ll take “vulnerably candid” for a hundred please, Alex.

Oh, and, hey, throw in “Cryptic Introductions” for two hundred, while you’re at it. 😉

We all have our “things”. The things that speak to us on some innate, organic level. The things that have no choice but to be our things, because we couldn’t un-thing them if we tried.

Writing—it’s my thing. It chose me. It excites me. Not because I enjoy looking up which form of “affect” or “effect” to use, every blessed time I need to use one of them. Definitely not because my middle-aged brain relishes the daily (minutely?) begging of everyday words to come out and play; seems they stubbornly prefer the comfy spot right there on the tip of my tongue. Writing excites me because the One who snuggled it deep within my marrow, created me for it, and it for me. At least, in part.

These “things”, otherwise known as passions, enliven us because our Creator summoned them to spring from the essence of who we are—and when used as He intended, they point right back to Him.

So, shouldn’t something, born of God’s hand like this, flow with the graceful ease of a wind-caught snowflake? Therein lies my frustration. This frustration is not due to a lack of ideas. Ideas abound. Lately, my struggle is in fleshing out these ideas into coherent, lovely little 800-words-or-less articles. They’re screaming to be written, to make a difference, to point back to Him—yet trapped. Trapped inside the mazed never-land of my mind where they can check in, but they can’t check out.Future Ink

It’s tempting to call these moments “writer’s block”, and yeah, there’s probably some truth in that. Thing is, though, that term seems to negate the fact that the ultimate purpose of our heaven-born passions is to glorify Him.

So, perhaps what I’m suffering from is patience-block. I want words to pour onto the page yesterday. He wants them to make a difference tomorrow. He’s going ahead of me, and doing exciting things, things rooted in the eternal. There’s no doubt in my mind that He’s very active in my inactivity.

Every word that He’ll ever call me to write…He’s already written. In future ink.

To sense His presence, His involvement, but to have it unwitnessed by human understanding…confounds me, yet calms me. And, with this whispered reminder, this divine wink—He re-centers me.

Whether I scribble out something once a month, or once a week, or once a day—it matters not. What matters is that this passion that He’s embedded in me, is returned to Him…returned with interest, I pray.

Such a blessing our spirits hold – to be a part of God at work. Whatever our callings, whatever Kingdom purposes He has for us—to somehow play any small part in the richness, the fullness of His plan—is so very worth the honor of the wait.  Chasing Holiness

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Comments

  1. Rosanne says

    February 20, 2015 at 11:44 pm

    I love this idea – future ink. I will have to remember this the next time the words seem stuck and won’t flow. 🙂 What a comforting thought to know that God already knows everything I will ever write.

    Reply
  2. Julie @ Logger's Wife says

    February 21, 2015 at 8:16 am

    I really like this view if “writer’s block.” I’m going to have remember it the next time I get stuck.

    Reply

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