Truth in the Chaos

From the time I could properly hold a pencil, I remember writing. Anything. Everything. As I grew older these weird shapes became known to me as letters. And these letters formed into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into page after page after page. Most of the time, it didn’t make much sense, and sometimes it didn’t even make sense to me. But that never stopped me.

I remember receiving my first journal as a young girl, maybe around twelve years old or so. That's an awkward age for anyone. You suddenly feel as though you’re too “mature” to play with toys, though you’re still not a teenager. Most teenagers wouldn’t want to be caught dead with you. Basically, you’re stuck in this place called in-between. You feel as though you don’t belong in any group of people, an outsider looking in. (Yes, I realize I’m being dramatic. Everyone’s dramatic at twelve years old).

But I remember holding this crisp, polished journal and smiling, thinking of how it made me feel older. What would I write about in this? A boy I thought was cute? A fight I had with my best friend? Or maybe something inspirational I learned from my mom that day? The possibilities seemed endless, as were the many empty pages waiting patiently to be filled with words. My words. Suddenly, I was important.

You’d think I’d remember what I wrote about on that first day, or all the days it took to fill the journal. But, I don’t. Not a single word, which kind of makes this seem a little anticlimactic. Maybe it should’ve been a bigger milestone in my life, something I memorized down to the last detail.

Though it doesn’t really matter, at least not to me. At that point, it wasn’t about what I wrote. It was simply the act of “writing” itself. Because from that point on, writing became a form of outlet for me. Something I used to escape. Escape what, you may ask. Ha, that question has a lot of answers, none of which need to be brought up right now.

Soon, writing had become a part of my everyday life. An act as simple as breathing. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t always form words of my own. I’d write my favorite scriptures, quotes, or song lyrics instead. Whatever happened to be on my heart in that moment. I felt as though if I didn’t write it down, I’d forget it. Maybe that was the start of a bad habit, but it was one I had no intention of breaking.

The pages always seemed to fill faster when the world around me rapidly became too heavy to bear. When it started throwing things at me that I wasn’t fast enough to catch (I was never any good at sports). And that’s where the word escape comes into play. I didn’t want anyone around to see my hurt, to see my broken parts. So, I hid behind my words and hoped they’d be enough.

But of course, they weren’t.

Writing has always been easier than talking for me. I believed there was less danger in that. If I didn’t have to say something out loud, it wouldn’t be quite as real. Though, as you’ve probably guessed, I was wrong about that too. I was trying to live on my own in a world made for connection. Connection to people, to nature, to music, to art.

To God. Always to God.

● Romans 12: 4-5 says “For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.”

● 1 Peter 5:7 says “Casting all your care upon him; for He careth for you.”

What these scriptures tell me is that nothing we face should be faced alone. It’s why we gather in a church, or with our friends and family. Nothing we may ever do could be bad enough to live in isolation, away from the rest of humanity. It’s in our nature to want to connect with others, and we don’t realize how much we actually need it until we’re left living without it. I think that’s why God lets us feel lonely sometimes. A reminder that we weren’t meant to be that way. And to remind us that we’re never truly alone. Even if you feel like you have no one. Close your eyes. Though it seems contradicting, it gives you a better perspective. With our eyes closed, it’s far easier to see what isn’t visible. To feel it. To feel Him . As the boys in my youth group like to repeatedly sing, “He’s as close as the mention of His name.” 😉

As I grew, so did the words I wrote. They changed as I changed, evolved as I evolved. If you read carefully, you can catch it. Things that haunted me on one page we’re resolved on another. I was becoming who I was meant to be.

And guess what? I still am. In a way, I think I always will be. We’re not going to simply wake up one day and be this person we’ve always dreamt of being. It’s something we’re going to have to strive for the rest of our lives. An on-going process, day in and day out. To be everything we know we can be, and to understand that it’s worth fighting for.

Sometimes, we’ll fail. We’ll fail a lot. We’ll disappoint ourselves and we’ll disappoint the ones we love. Because the world isn’t going to stop trying to fight us just because we decide we’re going to fight back. There will always be something, or someone ready to knock us down. There will be times when they succeed, because that’s a part of life. We get hurt. We become broken. And we fall.

But that doesn’t have to be the end of our story. What’s that famous scripture?

● Proverbs 24:16 says “For a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again…”

Falling isn’t a loss, at least not completely. The real loss is when you choose to stay down; when you decide it’s no longer worth it to get back up. That's a cliche we've all heard about a few hundred times, right? That the only true failure is choosing to fail, choosing to quit. But I think once you've lived something like that, you realize that cliches are there for a reason. There's always a little bit of truth to them.

Rising up after a brutal fall is hard, but as long as you do it, and keep doing it, you win. Don’t you know He’s already won your victory?

That’s the truth I’ve found in the midst of the chaos.

The chaotic truth.

So, I continue to write, only this time it’s different. Usually I write for myself. Only myself. I’ve always believed it to be too mortifying to show anyone else.

Now I’m writing with a purpose.

I’m not under any illusion that I have these big, brilliant words to say that’ll attract people from all over. I know that isn’t the case. But the words I have are from my heart. And I think that maybe some of them are from God’s heart too.

I know that it’s likely most people won’t connect with what I have to say. That the words will get mocked or laughed at. They may even get screenshotted and sent to a group-chat for an entire group of people to do just that.

Even if this is the case, even if I only encourage one person, one soul, I’ll know that I’ve succeeded. God came down to this earth just to die on it, knowing He wouldn’t reach everyone. Knowing He’d be mocked and ridiculed. Knowing that they’d try to break Him. But it didn’t stop Him from trying, and I can’t let it stop me. Isn’t that what He called us to do? Spread His love to all corners of this world? This is my small attempt at doing just that.