Why I write...

My new friend Kimberly Coyle over at find time for tea has been blogging about writing and creativity this week and she got me to thinking... why is it that I write? Sometimes it feels like it is for Him... often times I'd like to think it is for you... and a lot of the time it feels like it is all for me! Honestly, I can't remember a time when I didn't write?  I am what you call a Journaler…

...from the age of locked diaries hidden beneath beds, all the way through the poetry phase and crumpled up stories littering the floor, to the moment I met Him… (& ‘him’ – meeting both Jesus & my earthly husband at the same time!)

I write because it's a call… it is part of who I am!  I journal everyday happenings, I write note cards to friends, send emails to family far away, I blog about hobbies and daily life and how He is so madly, madly in love with us.  All of it, with the hope that He spills through the ink, reaches through the screen, and that He will transform even a simple line into a breakthrough for the ones who will receive it!

It seems everywhere I go, the Lord is stirring up creativity and wanting each of us to know that we ARE creative!  We are created in His image… part of our identity is wrapped up in eyes that can glimpse beauty and hands that make Glory be seen. No matter if you consider yourself artsy, or crafty, or creative, or not - you ARE, because He is!   This year the Lord has reminded me again and again of the power of words; the creative power of words.  He has taught me to speak on purpose, with purpose!  He has called me to speak Life and speak Love and speak into those hurting and lost - to tell them what good that I see in them; what it is that God sees in them.  For He looks at us outside of time and see us EXACTLY how He created us to be!  And that is my Call – to write about Him… and who we are in Him, and part of what I love most about writing is spending time with Him… catching a vision, and painting it out with words.

My hearts’ desire & why I write is that He will move in it and through it not only to touch my heart, but to touch yours!  For my life message is wrapped up tight in those childhood diaries filled with dreams, that teenage poetic heart, and those young adult fresh eyes, seeing grace freely handed out some 20 years ago, for the first time! It’s also wrapped up in the now daily life of bossy lists and everyday realness of being a wife and a mom, a daughter, sister, friend... My life message is written down, so that it may encourage me on tough days, remind me when I forget, and be a testimony when I am gone!

I encourage you to journal your walk with Him, what He is speaking to your heart, and watch and see what He will pour out through your words!  Whether it turns into a book or not… or if you even mean for it to, it is YOUR story... a legacy to pass down to the generations that follow!

I stumbled upon an old treasure on a few years back while going through boxes of pictures with my mother:  a very old, crumbled, yellowed-with-age poem, handwritten by my Grandmother… it was her story…  it is my story… and THAT is why I write!

~Karrilee~