It’s a ministry and a calling and the thing that feels right.
It’s as natural as breathing but I’ve been holding my breath.
Five years of writing and I attached the word to my being but send me to Haiti and the words dry up.
I’ve spent seven days processing and thinking and sitting and waiting. I’ve made myself busy and made myself be still. I’ve spoken up and quieted down and all I can see when I close my eyes are these faces.
If I sit quiet long enough I hear the story of the former witch doctor, the voices of the children singing our welcome, and the missionary saying “just tell your story.”
And still, the words run dry and my mind walks around the bumpy streets of Haiti. People keep asking how it was and if I’ve written and I speak a quiet “no” and shake my head side to side.
It’s dangerous, this title of writer. Because when you claim it, people expect you to actually, well, write.
This breathing naturally feels like suffocating under the weight of the stories. Someone said once that they bear the weight of an untold story and I hear Haiti’s cries and laughs and songs of praise and I want desperately to share but what does the writer do when words run few?
If small is the new big and scared is the new brave then broken is the new beautiful.
These words, they are small and scared and they feel broken, raw and unpolished – but they’re a start, a first inhaled breath after too long under water pushing down.
Maybe being a writer has less to do with the amount of posts each week and more to do with the genuine bravery and soul-truth found in the words.
Writers write because they cannot stay silent. Writers carry the torch and fan the flame. Writers speak life and hope and meaning into broken and bruised and worn down souls.
Writers keep on writing even when the words dry up because they know rain will fall again.
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Breaking the silence simply because it’s Five Minute Friday and I can’t stay away. These people, this tribe, it’s what community is about.
Related: for when you realize you might actually be a writer // there’s nothing small about being brave
Sweet Hannah, this one is much because of you, your encouragement, and your quiet push to allow the words to be the healing and the beginning. You inspire. You encourage. You are a gift.
