THE TETHERING PLACE

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I am back at the place where it all began, really: a beautiful Young Life property tucked in a serene little inlet off the coast of Canada.  This place, Malibu, is my heart’s respite. It is a place where years and years ago, I discovered the fullness of life that we all yearn for. It is the place where I have seen lives change, my own included. I have been reborn, revived, renewed, reworked here. I have flown in for a brief adventure to fall more in love with my fiancé as I witnessed him serve and work out of his “sweet spot”; I have taken numerous ferries and buses and boat rides in order to experience some of my greatest challenges and sweetest joys in being a mom here; I have experienced sorrow and heartache and reconciliation and hope in the midst of journeying with young women through life here; I have laughed until it hurt, and I have cried until it ached; I have found my voice here… more importantly, I have found His voice here.

It was here at Malibu, just a few months ago while speaking at a weekend retreat for high school students, when several of my dear friends, friends who know my heart and my life and my mess and my gifts,  took me aside, and asked, {not in a curious, inquiring sort of a way, but a get-your-buns-in-gear sort of way} when are you going to start writing?

I shook my head and smiled and in a flattered, but unsettled way responded, ” I just feel as if I have nothing new to add.”

I mean,  I look out there at the Shauna Niequeists and the Jennie Allens, the Beth Moores and the Joy Eggerichs, the Emily Lex’s and the Brene Browns to name a few, and think… it’s covered. They are all doing what is on my heart to do… to tell story and teach scripture and inspire vulnerability and creativity and intimacy with the God who holds my heart and has given me life.   The blog world/book world/media world is saturated.  It feels overwhelming and I feel inadequate and un-unique.

Later that night I processed with a new musician friend who, to my surprise, had plopped down next to me in the midst of the boardwalk and asked me out of the blue if I was going to start writing soon {I was beginning to sense a theme}. I expressed my fear of feeling like I had nothing unique to offer,  to which my Nashville-dwelling, guitar-playing, singer-songwriter friend responded dryly with a twinkle in his eye, “ya, I never feel that way.”

Ha! It felt so ridiculous to speak aloud when I realized in his facetious response the fear that every writer, musician, artist must feel.  For this young man to echo my thought so quickly and for me to in the same moment be so thankful that he did not abandon his incredible gifting for fear of not being unique enough to make it, did something in me.

{An aside – For all the singer-songwriters that must feel like a million others are trying to “make it with their voice, their good looks, their lyrics and their guitar”… we would miss out on the unique tones, the cadence of your particular voice, the truth echoed in a song refrain, the mingling of chords and vibrato and heart if you did not obey the pull deep within you to do something with the gift that brings you life and joy! Do it, make what your heart wants to make, without fear of if or how it will be received.}

For me, to write is to think and to live and to process life and truth… and to be tethered  to a living God.  And so, while there is more to this story, I leave you with this…

Regardless of what is out there, there is something in here, in me  that cannot be contained.  And so whether I write for one or for thousands, it is time to worry less about what I have to add, but more about what I have to offer. I doubt much that I will have anything new to say, for everything that passes through my lips or past my fingers is but recycled truth from a million sources. But it will be unique and different in tone, words woven together like none before and none after, that may offer even one person hope to step out of their comfort zone and into the place where the magic happens.  Even if the only person is me.