How I Became a Writer

I am part of an (in)courage online writing community, and this week’s prompt is to write about how you happened upon your writing journey.

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Although I wrote a little when I was younger, one could say that I was not a writer growing up. I was quiet and rarely communicated my innermost thoughts with anyone. As a highly sensitive child, it did not feel safe to be myself, so I developed a rich inner imaginative life and fed it by reading.

I think I was 5 the first time I wrote a book. I don’t have the book nor do I remember much of what was in the book, but the fact that I wrote a book was a childhood highlight, and I was so proud of it. Later on, I was disappointed that it had been thrown away or lost.

I don’t remember much about writing in the years between that time and adolescence. I know and remember that I was a voracious reader.

As a teenager, I always had a journal. I was drawn to paper and pen. It was these years that I wrote a bunch of angsty teenagery things and “I hate my parents,” they-don’t-understand-me type things. Writing was the only way to express the real me inside. She was a secret to everyone. I felt I had to be the strong one who listened and at times solved the problems.

In ninth grade, I wrote something for English class based on the painting below by Normal Rockwell.

Image from Norman Rockwell Museum Store

It was a short story called, “Mabel.” I was so proud of it, and the following year, I had it published in a school literary journal, but I don’t have a copy of it.

In my recent escapades in the attic (decluttering), I’ve read stories and term papers I wrote, but the articles were not what I would now call good. However, in the attic, I found my greatest treasures – cards and words written to me by others encouraging me in my faith walk.

In college, I had confidantes, and I kept a journal and consistently documented God’s work in my life and my prayers. I also wrote for classes. I distinctly remember my freshman English teacher telling me that I had stories to tell, but that they would be easier to tell after my parents were no longer living. At the time, I didn’t really know myself or my story.

Later I took a technical writing class, and the teacher told me I was an excellent technical writer. I also really loved to send people encouraging cards in the mail, and I dreamed of starting a card ministry to encourage others.

After college, I began a job as an engineer and wrote technical reports and recommendations. Writing at the time was mostly copying someone else’s report and changing the details. I loved it, and love-hated the red marks I still received upon review. Technical writing was not soul writing though, so as much as I enjoyed it, it did not offer me life.

During this time of singleness, I had a quarter life crisis. It was a turning point in my story. I didn’t journal; I didn’t write, and as inward as I had always been, I holed up even more within myself and waited for Rescue. I was the one people called frantically for advice, a listening ear, and salvation. I grew to hate it, as I was suffocated. No human can ultimately be the Savior.

After the pinnacle of the quarter life crisis, I got married, quit my job, and started having babies. In the time between working as an engineer and becoming a mom, I worked on staff with my church as a congregational care assistant. What did I do? I wrote encouraging cards to the sick and ailing.

Though I’d passed the worst part of the crisis, the stress of inward living and carrying the problems of everyone I knew was killing me, and my health was poor.

After my first baby, I was happy, my health was better, and I was starting to come out of crisis and back to normal. I was so elated, we decided to have another baby, making my first two children 19 months apart. Still living inwardly and having the stress of two babies so close in age and not knowing another mother to be friends with, I found myspace, which led me to start a motherhood blog on blogger.

Blogging changed my life, as I found myself able to process things that had at once eaten me from the inside out. For the first time, I began to understand myself and be understood. To be honest, I am sure I wrote things publicly I had no business writing publicly, but the words that had built up within me were now tumbling out, and I was being healed by words, by telling the truth of my story. It wasn’t enough for me to write for myself; I needed my voice to be heard too.

About three years ago, I wrote and gave my testimony. Afterward, God radically awakened me to his grace and set me free from all the bonds I thought He wanted me to carry. My Rescue had come. He called me to write and to speak, and that was the first time I allowed myself to be called, “writer.”

Some days my writing seems a farce. It is a craft, an art, a way of understanding and release. After five and a half years of blogging, I am just beginning baby steps toward writing excellence. I still make many mistakes, but over the years as I’ve written about writing, I am a writer through and through.

Words bring me healing and release and help me find the true Savior, because He is the ultimate Word, and His Words spoke me into existence and set me free from myself and all that I thought I had to become and be. The Word made Himself known to me through words, and I hope that I in turn continue to make Him known as I share my words and the story He writes upon my heart.