Kitchen Table Wisdom

This morning, I brought two questions from my writing group to the table.

The first was simple enough:
“If you could unwrap ONE gift for your writing life before the year ends, what would you hope to find inside?”

I thought about the usual things a writer might wish for. More time. A little inspiration. Perhaps a quiet place where the words would flow without interruption. But none of those was my answer.

If I could unwrap one gift, I really think it would be—understanding.
Not from my readers, but from the people closest to me—my family.

My family knows me as the pastor who preaches on Sunday mornings. The one who occasionally shows up to do a family funeral.

They know I write and paint, but sometimes I feel like they see those things as quaint little hobbies.

You know, just something I do with my spare time.
Which, as a pastor, I must have a lot of.

What they don’t see are the hours spent preparing worship, writing sermons, visiting the sick, sitting with grieving families, and carrying the concerns of people entrusted to my care.

Or the responsibility of guarding the stories placed into my hands.
Not every story can be shared.

They don’t see the hours spent at my desk, wrestling with words, rearranging sentences, searching for just the right way to express something stirring in my heart.

Writing takes time. It takes thought.
Sometimes it takes more of me than I expected to give.
And yes, sometimes I wonder whether any of it makes a difference.

But then someone I’ve never met leaves a comment or sends a message. Something I’ve written has encouraged them. Perhaps it helped them through a difficult day or allowed them to recognize God’s presence in a place they hadn’t thought to look.
And I am reminded why I keep writing.

Strangers sometimes see something in my words that the people closest to me do not.
And yes, that hurts.

I don’t need applause. I don’t expect everyone to love what I write or understand every thought I put on paper.

I just wish the people I love could understand that I don’t write because I have nothing better to do.
It’s part of who I am.
It’s part of what I am called to do.

That is my wish.

Now, the second question leads to my prayer.

“If you had just one to highlight, what specific grace-infused message of hope, freedom, healing, encouragement, comfort, or grace has God called you to share through your writing?”

It’s a good question.

I’ve written about grief and gratitude, forgiveness and failure, the ordinary moments of life and the extraordinary ways God sometimes meets us in them.

I’ve written about Cain, a man who murdered his brother and yet received a mark of protection from God. I’ve written about barren fields and trees stripped of their leaves. I’ve written about the people who have taught me something about faith simply by living through circumstances I could scarcely imagine.

And I’ve written about my own questions, because I certainly don’t have all the answers.

But a thread runs through those stories.
Grace has been pursuing us all along, even when we didn’t recognize it.

As a United Methodist pastor, I know that as prevenient grace. The grace that goes before us, reaching toward us before we even know to reach toward God.

But grace isn’t always gentle.

Sometimes it confronts us. Sometimes it calls us to account for what we’ve done. Sometimes it asks us to let go of something we’ve held too tightly.

And sometimes grace simply sits beside us in the darkness, offering no explanation, only the assurance that we are not alone.

I don’t believe faith protects us from life’s hard things. I’ve lived too long and seen too much to believe that.

But I do believe God’s grace is present in the midst of them.

Sometimes we recognize it immediately. Sometimes we don’t see it until years later, when we look back and wonder how we ever made it through.

And sometimes we may never recognize it at all.
Still, I believe it is there.

That’s my prayer. That’s the message I hope finds its way into my writing. Not a tidy answer to every question or a promise that everything will turn out as we wish.

Just an invitation to look again. To consider the possibility that God has been at work in the ordinary, messy, beautiful, heartbreaking moments of our lives all along. And perhaps to discover that we have never been beyond grace’s reach.

As I think about those two questions, something occurs to me.
My wish and my prayer are not so different.

I wish the people closest to me could see something of the woman behind the words.

And I pray that the people who read those words might see something of the God who has been present in their lives all along.

One is a longing to be understood.
The other is a need to help others understand.

Perhaps that’s why I keep coming back to this kitchen table, pouring another cup of coffee and opening another blank page.

I have stories yet to tell. Questions yet to ask. Grace yet to discover.

And somewhere out there, someone may need to hear what I have to say.
And maybe that someone is family.

So, I’ll keep writing.

Not because everyone understands.
Not because every word will make a difference.

But because I believe grace is still at work, both in the telling and in the hearing.

That’s my wish and that’s my prayer.

Cathy D.