This of course makes great sense to me now. I've always written in order to work out the thread of an idea, something that I was conflicted with, something I didn't quite understand, something I needed to know the answer to. Through the course of writing, I was able to organize my thoughts, advance that idea and make some sort of conclusion...not always completely, but further and deeper than I would have made it otherwise. What I discovered almost from the beginning was that I was the problem I was struggling with. And through this all, God was revealing things to me about myself. Truths I hadn't or couldn't accept. Lies I'd been believing. Hurts I'd been holding onto. Fears I hadn't faced. Regrets and guilt I was clinging to...all very tenuous lifelines in a storm. And I found this out very painfully through the past year.
When I was a kid growing up in Napanee Ontario, my fondest memory is going to Dupont Beach with my grandparents. The best days were when a storm was rolling in and the waves would whitecap and crash against the beach and rockfaces. As a kid, you have little fear of such things. These waves would come in at twice your size. They'd batter you, they'd push you back and pull you under. But with the glee of a child, you'd beg for the next. It was a different type of fear. A fear that made you bigger than you were, stronger than you were, a conquering hero. It made you feel alive, it gave you hope. It made you think you could bear and best anything.
As adults, we recoil from such risk and danger. We cling to false lifelines or worse yet we stand frozen on the beach too afraid to enter the water. Too afraid to brave the wave and run to Hope. And yet that is exactly what He is calling us to do. To run fearfully into the water, to brave the storm with glee, to best the wave and brave the next, to hope for Hope despite the fear. He asks us to be brave, so be brave with the courage (and fear) of a child.
