Hunger Pains and The Neglected Pen

When I started this blog in 2015, I wasn’t really looking for much of an audience. I was just looking for a place to find release. I needed to get the words out of me or they were going to silently consume me to the point of implosion. The thought of that outcome was too scary to even imagine. To be eaten by the very hunger that compelled me to write in the first place…how ironic would that have been?

So I wrote. I loved it and I loved the sense of being known as I carefully formed each phrase of thought.

But the past year came in like a flood and with that heavy rain came new growth opportunities that I never could have been able to anticipate. Good things have bloomed and I’m grateful for the downpour of blessings that have washed away yesterday’s old mindsets .

However, I stopped writing because I got caught up in the flow of the new. The refreshing rain gave me moments of tangible joy but that relentless ache started gnawing at my insides again. That familiar groaning that says, “Nothing else is going to satisfy your desire to write…except writing.”

So here I am at the end of a very full year and my soul is having hunger pains. My new experiences have drowned out my old restless ways. God knows I needed that baptism as a reminder of His amazing grace. But it’s not thirst for adventure that wakes me up at night anymore. It’s a longing for a recorded life.

What’s the point of living the dream if no one knows about it? Not for glory or glamour, no. For a chance to point to the One who brings wholeness as we allow our hunger and thirst to draw us closer to Him.

After all, a satisfied life means that we are to  live at the intersection of the external and the internal. Always. If we are drenched from the rain but our hearts are weak from starvation, we are still half-empty. If our inner being feasts on manna but our bones become brittle from neglect, then we waste away.

To be made whole is my greatest desire and to do that means I must respond to the hunger inside by documenting my thirst-driven life. So I choose to drink of His grace and I pray that my well lived stories ultimately reflect the Story Giver.