I do a lot of writing. You may have noticed.
Aside from my blog, though I’ve also been keeping a journal. I’ve discovered that between the two, the writing itself is something that helps me to process. I think of myself as an internal processor because it takes me longer to put things into words, and I carefully craft my thoughts in my head before they come out. Even when I write, I use the backspace key judiciously, so what you see is many times edited over from my brain to my fingers to the screen. And maybe that does make me an internal processor. But I don’t necessarily like fitting in a well-defined box, and more and more I’m finding the value of putting stuff out there, if for no reason than it sometimes surprises even me when it goes from vague unshaped notions in my mind to solid black-and-white words on a page or screen.
At dinner tonight, Preston and I got on the subject of writing. He does a lot of research, and has written several books, but it was his journaling that started the conversation. We talked about why we journal and the thought process and the actual product. It’s interesting to me that my journal is the one and only thing I write and have no idea who my audience is. Do I really want to re-read it? Do I really want anyone else to read it? Even after I’m dead?
At some point after Mike and I disbanded our first co-written website, I do remember thinking to myself about all the thoughts I had which themselves had nowhere to go. I’m sure this was a self-aggrandizing thought, but I decided my ideas had to much value not to be recorded.
I also spent a lot of time last summer talking about the “Operation Auca” missionaries, the five men who were martyred here in Ecuador in the 50’s. One of the most famous quotes from Jim Elliot’s writings is something he wrote only days before he died, which said “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” It sounds so profound now, looking at what he is known for now, but when he wrote it, it was just how he looked at life. I’m not so arrogant as to think I’ll ever write anything that will be published by anyone else and that will seem even half that intelligent or ring that true. But once in a while I discover something I put down in ink or pixels that I would never have otherwise remembered I’d thought. Sometimes I still don’t remember thinking of it myself.
I recently corrected all the spelling errors in a blog post I wrote last summer. I pulled it up exactly 365 days later as I was preparing for a devotion at Benjamin House. I really didn’t remember that one, but it was pretty profound. My brain must have been going pretty fast for me not to bother to even glance over it before I hit the “publish” button. But I’m sure there was some value at the time in writing it, and I can definitely see the value in re-reading it. At only twelve sentences, I think it may be my favorite thing I’ve ever written, and I didn’t even remember it, and never would have thought about it again if it hadn’t been recorded.