Abide. Proclaim. Bestow.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, says Isaiah*, and later Christ in the Gospels*.

The words unravel and re-weave this anointing of my flesh, the very calling of my spirit. I know deep and hard this work and this purpose.

I write to proclaim release to the captives.

I write, as Christ lives, to provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty* by pointing to freedom, proclaiming release.

It is my longing to tell you, with all of my breath every day and forever, to take heart dear friend and receive the crown of beauty. Throw open your arms and soar a while in your own sweet release, because I have known it, because it is magnificent.

But I forget, daily, to breathe in and receive. I forget to slow the thundering hooves and linger in my freedom long enough to proclaim it. I wash laundry and file papers and shepherd babies and my fingers don't find the keyboard. I make phone calls and wonder where the days go and when I will find the time to proclaim release when I'm jailing my very self with too much of the wrong kind of work and sit behind the bars of self-doubt to mold a casing around my tender heart with the liar's black clay.

I am mentally and spiritually aware that to abide is not merely to obey or to exist. This awareness, though, comes up shy of internal some days and days turn into weeks as days are wont to do.

And so I make the paper remember for the words to instruct when the brain forgets. I make the schedule to cradle a cushion to abide, a daily space for the fingers to find the keyboard: first, time to read and sit and pray and receive, then 4 hours a day of like-it-or-not writing time, beginning tomorrow. No excuses. No escape.

Because,

I am a writer before I am a housekeeper.

I am a writer before I am a chef.

I am a writer before I am an interior designer, a patio sweeper, a phone app dawdler, a grocery shopper, an iced-tea guzzler.

I am a writer before I am a Facebook junkee, a Twitter checker, a Pinterest surfer.

And? I am a mother before I am a writer. A wife, a daughter, a friend. So I puzzle the things together and remember them all as gifts. 

I must first breathe in my freedom and break through with release. First, I dance, radiant, with my flowering crown of beauty.

First?

Abide.

Then?

Proclaim.

Bestow.

And Write.

Will you join me, too, in this?

Abide, dear friend. Live in creativity. Live in amazement. Live in love. And let the rest all fall away.

And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all Christians the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

                                                                                                -Ephesians 3:14-19

  

*Isaiah 61:1-3, Luke 4:16-21

Acting Like One

"You Are a Writer, So Start Acting Like One."

At least, that's what Jeff Goins tells us to do. He believes in his message so much, he's hosting a contest for his readers at http://youareawriter.com... and he wrote a book about it.

{Go buy it. I'll wait.}

So about this contest...


What's the craziest thing you've ever done to tell the world you're a writer…to tell yourself and make yourself believe it? 

Oh boy. 

This, perhaps?

I've been a writer as long as I remember, scribbling stories about elves on ripped notebook paper in my childhood bedroom, then later, heart-bare teenage angst about boyfriends (or the lack thereof). I never stopped writing but at some point I stopped believing I could "make it" as a writer and tucked my work into journal pages and computer folders, never to see the light of day.

I poured over the craft, unleashing myself to the words, to the page, and gazing starry-eyed at the authors I admired, the ones whose name splashed across book covers in block letters, the dream I couldn't dare to dream.

Until I did.

Someone once said that people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be. I think, too, people are about as successful. Your definition of success may be different from mine, but all in all, your state of mind and what you declare about yourself has a lot to do with where you are and where you're going.

I was tired of people asking, "What do you do?" and not feeling the freedom to tell them I was a writer. I believed you weren't a writer until your name was on the cover a book and I believed I wasn't good enough for that, that I'd fail miserably and lose the only thing I was good at.  

The problem with that attitude, by the way is that writers write books. There will be no book cover if you aren't already a writer. I always knew I'd write forever, it was as much a part of me as my elbows, my eardrums…or more so. But fear paralyzed me from taking myself seriously and no one read my work. I didn't dare bring that which I loved most onto the chopping block. It was too sacred.

With no one to write for, the words became few. I talked myself into a more sensible career and tended to my family… and ached with the weight of what was trapped within.

To save myself, to save my gift, to resurrect the dream... I had to become what I already was. 

I made a choice I couldn't hide and I couldn't back down from and did what any normal, totally sane person would do and headed for the tattoo shop, branding myself with what I shied away from so easily. Making a declaration to the universe, to myself, the needle rose and fell, depositing lifelong ink beneath the skin of my wrist, blazing the badge that told the whole world. 

I am a writer.

Because when people ask about it (and everyone does), I have to declare myself to be what I am branded with. I have to present myself, despite my fears, as that which I know I am. I have to submit my work and keep trying because every day I see it, every day I explain it, and every day somebody asks what I'm working on. It's been a helluva motivator, I gotta tell ya.  

Because I fight hard against the odds, the fears, the failures and internal messages that threaten to kill the dream for me and this…this reflects the message that I cannot separate myself from writing. It's in me, it's on me, it is me.

Because when I grab the remote control or write checks or text on my cell phone, I see it. It reminds me what my hands ought to be doing. 

It was and is my only tattoo. Before I got it I hadn't published a single thing. (Daring move, I know.) I wasn't a writer yet…not by anyone else's standards, but I couldn't start there. I had to be a writer, believe I was a writer, to become a writer.

After? I published three magazine articles the month I got the tattoo, the first three I ever submitted. I started a blog. I won contests. I got sponsorships to writer's conferences. I had several pieces accepted for community book projects. I found serious joy in the thing I believe I was put here to be and to do.

After the joy, after the belief and the declaration, others started to believe it too. Publishers. Strangers. Tomorrow, I will be sending in a book proposal.

Now? The name-on-the-cover thing is just icing on the cake. It doesn't validate me or give me value, it simply confirms what I have already declared, what was declared about me when I was being created.

I am a writer.  

I don't believe anymore that you have to be published to be a writer. What I believe, though, is that you have to brand your mind and your heart with a permanence and a declaration and that you have to believe it to be true about yourself before anyone else will believe it about you. 

You are a writer.

Now start acting like one. 

Get. This. eBook. http://youareawriter.com
Do it. Right now, Slacker. Time's a' wastin'.

What's the craziest way you can think of to declare yourself a writer and announce it to the world?