A Woman of Words

I am a woman of words.

I started writing stories when I was small, banging away tiny narratives on my mother’s ancient typewriter that I stapled together and kept in an ancient Trapper Keeper.  Words have always been the channel of knowing for me: knowing myself, knowing others, knowing God.

I journal—both in pen and in type.

I write letters and cards to the people I love to tell them what they mean to me.

I compose words to God, both in my mind and on paper, and contemplate Scripture.

I think through my quandaries in words.  I have been known to pace and have conversations with myself aloud to practice for difficult conversations.  I write scripts for myself when I need them for presentations, for difficult beginnings, for moments where I know I will be asked to say something meaningful.

God has long spoken to me through words.  When I was in my high school and college years it was as though my Bible as constantly falling open to just the right phrase, verse, chapter.  Or a beloved church member would utter, apropos of nothing, exactly what I needed to hear.  My mother would often photograph words, send me pictures of observations from her Sunday School lessons to encourage me.

What, then, when the words dry up?

Or worse, when they come but their meaning fades?

When I was worried as a child, my mother would often tell me what comforted her most.  “I close my eyes in bed,” she said, “and I say to myself, ‘Let go, let God.  Let go, let God.’  And then eventually I always fall asleep.”

I tried this many times.  Let go, let God.  Let go, let God.  Let go, let God.  But sleep wouldn’t come, and I’d find myself half-conscious in the dark mumbling phrases that no longer made any sense, no longer held any discernable meaning: Leggo, Leggod, Leggoleggod, Leggo…

Sometimes, words become like this.

Sometimes, the Bible no longer falls open to just the right verse, but to some sort of taxonomical list in Leviticus, or a thundering comment on damnation.  Sometimes, a beloved church member will utter something facile or unintentionally insulting.  Sometimes writing the same words over and over prompts nausea.  Sometimes original prayers sound hollow, and borrowed prayers sound good until they become hollow, and then there is silence.

“What do you read, my Lord?” asks Polonius in Hamlet.

“Words, words, words,” Hamlet muttered.  Nothing is helping.  Knowledge isn’t helping.

I’ve found it crushing, at the times I’ve come to such a point.  At the times I must acknowledge that the words themselves do not seem to be making a difference, that all my talking and reading and listening for a word does not seem to be doing much other than stirring the air.

In Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura writes:

God cannot be known by talking about God, or by debating God’s existence (even if we “win” the debate).  God cannot be known by sitting in a classroom, or even in a church taking in information about God.

Fujimura does not deny that it is good to do the above; he simply asserts that we must experience God alongside those things.  That talking about God and learning about God and even thinking about God is not the same as experiencing God, and that experiencing God does not always (perhaps even often) happen when we do those things.

A few years ago this would have been anathema to me.

I am still a woman of words.  But this past year as I’ve found myself out of words, or exhausted by words, or frustrated by words, making way for time to experience God has shown me a way out of the quandary.

I go on long walks, and I listen.  I light a candle, and I listen.  I indulge in small joys.  I write down questions I have and thoughts in my journal.  I meditate on Scripture, without trying to derive some immediate sign or direction from it.  I make time for gratitude and sometimes simply list things I’m happy about or have enjoyed. I listen to music that makes me worshipful.

And it helps. I encounter God in these moments and opportunities.

The words do come at those times, though not always, it feels, from me.  I get glimpses of understanding and insight.  But I don’t stress if those moments don’t come.  I simply think to myself, God and I are spending time together.  I am trying to experience who God is.  And words or not, that will continue to transform me. 

All seasons come and pass.  But they come into our lives for a time to teach us something, to show us new habits, to reveal new aspects of God.  And in this season, having to be less reliant on what I know so well, I’m getting to walk a bit deeper into mystery.

It feels like the most wonderful relief.