When the going gets tough...we get writing? by Jane on behalf of Green Pastures Christian Writers

The 17th of the month sees members of Green Pastures Christian Writers taking turns at blogging. So far they have relished the opportunity to have a guaranteed, if small, audience for their vulnerably-offered ideas. 

This month, however, I hit a problem. Dear Lady A, due to write for November, found herself even more incapacitated than usual. She urged me to seek God (which I did) and ask someone else (ditto).

Dear Lady B was thrilled to be asked but was in the mires of all kinds of life’s torridness and could barely string an email together, never mind come up with a blog. Could I please ask someone else?

I went back to Lady A. We chatted on the phone, honestly, as friends can, discussing how hard life can be. It became obvious that the vague idea I’d had – to explore how jolly hard it is to write when life is horrible – was one worth pursuing. I am, therefore, writing on behalf of at least 3 of my group’s members and, perhaps, for you.

Lady A is, in fact Rachel, whom many of you will know from her brave posts within the ACW Prayer Room. You have been praying precious prayers for her, post-surgery; the recuperation journey a long, arduous and painful one. But she is one of those sweet souls who clearly hears from God and has the gift of articulating it well. She does so in her fine poetry (she calls herself a ‘word artist’), reading her own work in her distinct, careful way. There is one waiting for you at the end of this blog, once I’ve stopped talking.

Is it the case for a poet that ‘you don’t have to be in agony, but it helps’? I ask this with no sarcasm. It was Ernest Hemingway who said, ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ I think back to my old song-writing days, sitting not at a typewriter but the piano, pouring my anguished emotions into lyrics and tune. 

Is it in difficult times that our writing comes into its own, providing a voice for the unnamed trials of the soul?

Or is it in such times that writing dries up, our souls too withered to speak, or minds and bodies too tired and ill to find the strength?

For Lady A and Lady B and all of us it is our faith in God that sustains us – finding Him able to bear our weight as we lean on Him, letting hope rise so that we can ‘praise God in anticipation’.

God bless you, whatever season you are in; and may He inspire and sustain your writing.

And when

this journeying

has wearied me,

my body cold and

full of aching,

He gathers me up,

ties me swaddled

to Him on His back.

There for a while

I sleep, slumped close.

Though

I cannot really hear

He sings to me,

talks to me,

tells me of 

His love for me.

My breath is

sleeping – deep 

in time with His.

And then I wake,

stretch, sigh and

look around.

The view has changed.

‘Refreshing’ by Rachel Snell, 2011