If you’ve read my previous blog, you know that “Hinds’ Feet on High Places” is my favorite book, and that it’s my dream to one day be able to write a book that will impact christians’ walk with Christ the same way HFHP has impacted my own. Ever since I first read HFHP a couple years ago, that dream has been knocking impatiently around in my head, and when I decided to become an author, I immediately began thinking of ideas for that book.
I’ve been trying to come up with analogy to write about ever since, but all my efforts have been for naught. I simply couldn’t come up with a story to write.
It’s been so incredibly frustrating to hit a wall on this. This is my biggest dream, my number one goal. I consoled myself, telling myself I was only eighteen!
I had my entire career and life ahead of me to come up with the idea
God works in His own time but He promises to complete that work if not now then later, had I already forgotten the lessons I’d learned in Nepal about growth?
So I told myself not to be discouraged.
Still, I was upset. How could I not be? My biggest dream, and I was unable to do anything to even start trying to achieve it. And deep down, I was worried I would never get the idea for my book, that God wouldn’t give me an opportunity to glorify Him through my book.
But as I was struggling with these despairs, Encouragement Day arrived. At the beginning of our month in Zimbabwe, Team Seekers had decided to dedicate at least one day each week to encouraging our teammates. We would randomly pick names from a pile and encourage them, and at the end of the day we’d guess who our encourager was. Of course, unless one of us did a miserable job with encouraging our encouragee, we definitely knew who they were, but it was fun to guess anyways.
That Encouragement Day, I’d received Lo as my person to encourage. For those who might not be aware, Lo was the team leader for Team Seekers, and was staying with us for half of Zim before moving on to oversee another team in a different part of Bulawayo.
All od Encouragement Day, I hemmed and hawed about how to encourage her. One of her love languages was receiving gifts, so I worried over what to get her. The day was ending and I was panicking, when someone made the off comment about how Lo loved blackout poetry.
The previous night, one of us had spied a piece of blacked out text in her notebook. Lo had brightened when we’d asked her what it was, and told us it was a blackout poem gifted to her by a friend, and gushed about how she absolutely loved blackout poetry.
Immediately after they reminded me of the previous night, I ran to grab one of my books I’d picked up at the airport in India for some light reading. Muttering a small ‘sorry’ to its pages, I flipped to a page I thought would be promising, whipped out a open and begin underlining words.
All too soon, I had to flip to another page and start anew, having encounter trouble piecing together a poem on my first page. I must have gone through at least 10 different pages trying to piece together a poem.
Poetry had never been something I’d pursued, and it’s a well known fact amoung my Creative Writing class that I harbored an intense dislike for poetry simply because I was so bad at it. But for Lo I would try. Besides, it wasn’t like I had to come up with my own words, just pick and choose between those already written on the page, so I reasoned that it was different enough to attempt writing a poem out of it that maybe wouldn’t suck like all my previous attempts at poetry.
But it was hard!
I had nearly reached the point of giving up when I flipped to my final page, and told myself I would write the darn poem no question. I persevered, and as I finally finished boxing my chosen words, borrowing Keia’s sharpie to slowly but surely black out the rest of the page, despite the frustration I’d felt while writing it…I felt a spark. And urge to keep going. I wanted to flip to another page and start another poem. I wanted more.
So I did. And it was so, incredibly, freeing.
That week I must have written almost a dozen blackout poems, tucking some into my journal, while gifting others to my teammates. Hilariously, when I tried to black out a normal poem, God sort of just laughed and said, “This is for my glory, silly!”
And every poem I wrote ended up all about Him.
Weighed down by the disappointment I’d had about being unable to glorify God with my writing yet, I was freed by those chains by discovering blackout poetry. I never needed to come up with my own idea or words, only choose the ones I wanted.
And wow! What a sweet and amazing blessing from the Lord! I knew He promised I would one day write my book for Him, but how sweet was it for Him to see my disappointment and frustration and gift me with a small glimpse of what’s to come. He didn’t have to do that for me, but He did anyways. He comforted me and assured me of the promise He’ll one day fulfill in me. It was such a blessing for God to give me that avenue to glorify Him until He is finished maturing in me that skill and experience necessary for what He wants me to accomplish later.
God is so amazingly good to me.
