Why write? {on airing dirty laundry and authenticity in storytelling}

I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation (Psalm 40:10)

Where is your community? With whom do you have a megaphone with which to speak truth, to tell your stories, to reveal your redemption? Mine is my journal here. I try not to use it as a soapbox. I try to use it as my megaphone, my book, my story. For indeed, I've been delivered. Indeed, He has been faithful in his salvation. I do not wish to hide the light of my deliverance under a barrel. And so, I write.

And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity; when he goes out, he tells it abroad. All who hate me whisper together about me; they imagine the worst for me. They say, "A deadly thing is poured out on him; he will not rise again from where he lies." Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. (Psalm 41:6-9)

So many who've read what my story have gathered around me in a community of support and strength. Yet, in the past year, many have also come to reprimand me, to warn me that my story is not one of victory, but rather one of discipline. That cancer, and losing my voice, and having a child nearly die, and now losing my hearing - these are signs I am not on the divine path. That I am sinning and Christ is trying to turn me back to the road of righteousness.

I've given it a lot of thought. I've kept writing through the doubts that have arisen from comments like these. Time and again, it has been at the moment I lean hardest into Christ's sufficiency that tragedy comes knocking. It may be the devil, jealous of the new strength of my faith. Or it may be that Christ is using this family as his megaphone for glory. I don't believe it is a punitive God seeking to discipline his wayward saints. For aren't we all wayward saints?

Every sinner has a future, and every saint has a past. ~Oscar Wilde

I keep writing this blog, the keyboard clicking beneath fingers anxious to share our story. A deep longing that our story might spread far beyond the lessons it is teaching us, and proclaim Christ's glory and the depth and breadth of His love through suffering. That many might see, and marvel, at his faithfulness even in the darkest of times.