It is easy to sit and contemplate, to craft my words with care and attention and to carefully decide how much of me, of my heart, you get to see. How far to peel back the curtain.
Doing that in person is a different thing altogether.
I believe in the power of story. I believe that it is strong enough to shape us and transform us. I know that is true because I’ve watched stories change me, and because of that I will never stop writing or photographing stories.
But stories fail us when they’re only ever veiled.
“There is something about witnessing an individual’s search for the right phrases, looking into their eyes, shaking hands, or hugging shoulders that makes our stories come alive in a way that is overwhelmingly real and unforgettable.”
I can turn a phrase on paper, but in person I get tongue-tied and trip all over my words. Countless silent nights and teary phone calls with friends only prove how difficult it is to wrap words around the human experience.
Despite this, we must try.
We must be brave. We must find someone to share our story with, with courage and determination. We must find people to fight for us, to fight for our stories when we can’t. We must fumble and mumble and say all the wrong things, until anger and frustration and fear run out and give way to hope.
“I will always write. I will always read. Yet, in the end, it wasn’t the blinking screen or the paper and ink stories that I will most remember about these past few years. What I will remember — what saved me, transformed me, and got me through — were the hours on my couch with friends, the countless coffee dates, the hugs and smiles, the prayers and tears.”
In the dead of winter, I’m curled up under a duvet in my living room, journals strewn around me, coffee cup in hand. It’s a similar process each year: read the last year’s musings, make space to reflect, to listen, to dream again.
Lately, it’s been one or two word phrases that seem to guide and define my years. There was create (in all its forms), then there was adventure. This time?
Get closer.
That’s it. Get closer, Emma. Get closer to God, to other people, to your dreams. Don’t hide, don’t shy away, but take a step forward, take a step closer to the life you want.
Not long before Christmas, I saw Bon Iver play in Glasgow. He’s on stage with the band and what seems like more instruments than a full orchestra, and all around people are swaying and nodding and being immersed in this experience. It’s busy, and there’s people crowding around me. A group of friends move in front of me, and suddenly there is a ponytail in my face. Swaying. Nodding. And a ponytail.
Maybe God is like that ponytail in the face. Moving towards the dreams he calls us to is often uncomfortable; it’s not always what we would chose. When we step towards him, he’ll call us to change. But that ponytail-in-the-face moment is always rewarded far beyond our wildest dreams – it’s just that sometimes it doesn’t look the way we thought it would.
Sitting down with leaders such as Saddam – or Bashir of Sudan or Gadhafi of Libya – is a responsibility you cannot shirk given what you’re trying to achieve. You need to deal with those who can make a real difference, those who can stop the bloodshed. You have to talk to the leaders, and get them to find a way to end the killing. Otherwise, how do you accomplish it?
Sunny days deserve impromptu road trips. And a trip to St Andrews isn’t complete without a paddle in the ocean (even if it’s freezing), some form of food/drink at Mitchell’s and a Jannettas ice cream…
“The Bible is by far the most fascinating, beautiful, challenging, and frustrating work of literature I’ve ever encountered. Whenever I struggle with questions about my faith, it serves as both a comfort and an agitator, both the anchor and the storm. One day it inspires confidence, the next day doubt. For every question it answers, a new one surfaces. For every solution I think I’ve found, a new problem will emerge. The Bible has been, and probably always will be, a relentless, magnetic force that both drives me away from my faith and continuously calls me home. Nothing makes me crazier or gives me more hope than the eclectic collection of sixty-six books that begins with Genesis and finishes with Revelation. It’s difficult to read a word of it without being changed.”
“It is useless to compare something I’m working on now to something I’ve created in the past. This line of thinking will always prove to be unhelpful and unhealthy.
The only expectation when creating should be to do the work that is in front of you.
We can all suffer from unhealthy expectations, but the worst are often the expectations we have of ourselves.
You know, save the world single-handedly before breakfast and look great doing it.
Or, something like that….
The problem is, what happens when we don’t meet those expectations?
When we fall short of the standards we set for ourselves?
I have some crazy-big dreams that absolutely terrify me, and right now I feel like I’m falling short of them. That can be paralysing. Or it can be freeing.
“The only expectation when creating should be doing the work in front of you. Now.”
So, I’m starting over. I’m trying to rediscover those crazy dreams and why I even had them in the first place. It starts like this:
Scratch.
Read, write, watch, listen, remember.
“Our job as artists is to learn how to confess what lies unknown with us so that others might as well.”
[Blaine]
It begins with doing the hard work of figuring out what it is that lies unknown within ourselves. Why we are driven to do what we do. Why it matters. And then we share it. Because the world needs what God is doing in your heart.
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