Get Back on that Horse!
God is calling!
On New Year’s Day I wrote a post titled Unposting in which I made a public apology for having inadvertently hurt someone I love. The offense was in something I had written in my blog, which is also published on my Facebook page. At that time I took a voluntary hiatus from both blogging and facebooking.
Soon after that, we met to talk, and I apologized in person. We cried together, and the relationship was restored—perhaps better than ever before. Slowly I began posting again, but to be honest, it has been really hard to get back in the swing of writing again. Part of the reason is that I know I need to write about this painful episode. In my writing I take Hemingway’s advice to write hard and fast about the things that hurt (and everything else, for that matter), so I’ve been somewhat blocked because of avoidance. Plus, there’s a sort of rhythm you develop when you write daily that, once interrupted (and especially for this long) is really hard to get back.
Then yesterday I checked my phone upon returning home. You know how sometimes the phone in your pocket inadvertently dials one of your contacts. Well, instead of pocket dialing a person, my phone had opened my Bible app while in my pocket. I figured that maybe God was calling me, so I looked at the passage it was opened to: Deuteronomy 27, in which Moses built an altar on Mount Ebal and was about to pronounce the curses that would come if the Israelites did not follow God’s command when they crossed over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. The verse that stuck out for me was verse two:
When you have crossed the Jordan into the land the Lord your God is giving you, set up some large stones and coat them with plaster.
They were to set up large stones in plaster as a memorial of God’s Law. Immediately I understood that what God was telling me is that I need to get back into writing because with my writing I am setting up a memorial, not of God’s Law, but of God’s Love in our New Covenant with Him.
I had hurt and been hurt through my writing, but writing is also a holy task for me. So I need to get back on the horse that had bucked me off (pardon my Texan analogy, but I can’t deny my roots!), and write again. God is good!
Here’s the cashier’s post at my new favorite writing cafe.
