The Quest for Words, by Georgie Tennant

“Now the Word became flesh and took up residence among us.” 

John 1 v 14 NET

Last month, my sister lost her life to cancer.  Her baby son was seven months old at the time and her daughter turned six that week.  In the days leading up to it and in those that followed, two phrases echoed, everywhere I went: “I don’t know what to say,” and “I have no words.”  These have been familiar sentiments to me over the last six months since her re-diagnosis - on social media, in the school playground, at church, at her funeral.  I suspect I’m not done with them yet.

The problem is that we live in a world of words.  We use them to define, quantify, analyse, explain, solve, comfort.  Words feel like our only currency and they trickle and roar, calm and motivate, comfort and inspire.  Well chosen, they are every bit fit for purpose.  Thoughtless, careless and wrongly judged, they hurt.

We hit hard things and they seem to us to fail, inadequate to reach in to difficult depths of tragedy and loss.  As close family and friends, we struggle to find the right ones and as writers, we long to express even the tiniest sentiment a tempest-tossed soul might find comforting and able to cling to amid their personal storms.

I have been on an unquenchable quest for words. Words to soothe my sister and give her hope in those last months.  Words from others or God that might help me find an anchor in raging seas.  Words in books and songs that somehow express, better than I could, the deep agonies of a shaken spirit and breaking heart.  Words that might signpost the way for me to be made whole again, to reposition myself on firmer ground.

Like a forensic scientist running facial recognition software, looking for a perfect 100% match, I have scoured books, articles, poems, songs, ultimately accepting that it is impossible to find the exact combination of words that will ‘hit the spot’ and express my feelings completely.  Even if I write something I believe will fit better and help people in similar situations (and I hope one day to do so), my words will still only ever be a part-match -  because we are all unique and feel facets of our unique experiences in our fully unique ways (this feels obvious, but how easily we forget).

The closest I have come to finding words that echo some of the questions and cries of my heart are one song and one book.  Danny Gokey’s ‘Tell Your Heart to Beat Again,’ jump starts mine.  Pete Grieg’s ‘God On Mute,’ is helping me develop a theology for the devastating times I am in.  I write my own words and read them back to myself because they alone can pinpoint what I am feeling, record where I have been and, eventually, remind me of how far I have come.

I end this post with a poem I wrote as my sister’s health deteriorated and I felt desperately lost for words.  I pray, as writers, at the very least, we can be signposts, directing other weary travellers towards the Living Word, who is the only 100% match for all situations, for all of time.

           No Words

The words are out of reach today.

They hang on the boughs,

Not quite ripe or right.

In a different season,

They might have tumbled

Into my basket, landed

In an order that might have made

An adequately solid sentence.

But today –

When the prayed-for miracle

Feels further off,

And the hoped-for healing

Hasn’t happened,

The words taunt me,

Hanging on the highest branches,

Just beyond the arc of my arm.

Awkward silence settles.

I wait, without words,

Willing them to come.

But instead of words falling from the trees,

A rustling in the branches,

A warm wind,

Heralds the coming

Of a different Word –

Not a word from my tongue

Or my pen or those unripe boughs,

But The Word,

The Living Word,

The Word-Made-Flesh,

Infusing the silence

With His quiet presence.

Even without words,

His life-breath in me

Makes me alive,

Awakens hope in me afresh.

The myriad words

Are too high, unripe, not right.

I rest from trying to reach them;

I no longer need them.

With fresh certainty,

I know

That The Word,

Alive in me,

Is all that’s needed

To speak volumes,

In silence,

To a hurting world.

Georgie Tennant is a secondary school English teacher in a Norfolk Comprehensive.  She is married, with two sons, aged 9 and 6, who keep her exceptionally busy! She feels intimidated by having to provide an author-biography, when her writing only extends, currently, to attempting to blog, writing the ‘Thought for the Week’ for the local paper occasionally, and having a poem published in a book from a National Poetry Competition! Her musings about life can be found on her blog: www.somepoemsbygeorgie.blogspot.co.uk