The white computer screen stares me in the face day after day. But the longer my eyes stare at the white, it slowly transforms into what feels like red and blue lights flashing in my rearview mirror. The officer’s name is emptiness and I think of all the excuses in the book to defend myself.
“Do you know what you have been doing wrong?” he asks
Before I can say anything, he speaks again, “Nothing is wrong.”
Then it all makes sense.
That has been the problem. I stare day in and day out at this blank screen waiting for something to go wrong. When the waves of life, that feel like they have been crashing over you for years and years, finally still themselves to whisper. Then what?
I translate pain into writing. So I have been waiting, waiting for something to go wrong, waiting for the high tide to come once more. I have been waiting for some type of pain, waiting, because if it comes then I can write once more.
If there was a college degree for “not being okay” I am a Harvard graduate. I’ve grown to be comfortable in the chaos. I’ve grown to adapt to the environment.
Echidnas are like baby porcupines. When they are approached by something threatening they will often curl into a ball, leaving only sharp spikes pointing out toward an attacker, and they stay like that for as long as needed. Go ahead and call me an Echidna. I have curled into a ball, lifted my spikes to the sky, and have stayed like that as gravesides and rehab facilities have attacked. But now, how do I get out of that ball?
If you have read my other post, you know that Jesus has done amazing things in my family’s life this past year. You wait and wait for the day to come when the pelting of the rain storm finally stops, but now that it has come I have found myself so empty.
I have become so good at being “not” okay, that I do not know how to be okay. I do not know how to have that same desperation for Jesus in the everyday life as I did when I sat outside my room listening to my mom and brothers fight.
I don’t know how to translate joy.
But last night, Hannah Brencher, spoke at a girl’s night for my church, and said something that left me mouth wide open.
She said, “It’s not okay to just be lost anymore. You have to be found.”
Jesus was so clearly saying to me that it’s not enough to just translate the pain anymore, but that He wants me to learn to translate the joy. He was so clearly saying to me that it’s not enough to just be content with being not okay, but that He wants me to learn to be okay. He was so clearly saying to me that it isn’t okay to just be desperate for Him in the hard times, but that He wants me to learn to be desperate for Him all the time.
And then I cried to a stranger.
I have never met Hannah. I follow her blog (you should too) but I have never spoken to her. But of course I was assigned to sell her books last night. So she was standing next to me moments after she finished speaking, and I kept fighting myself before I leaned over to her and told her how what she said hit me so hard. Before I knew it my eyes were filled with tears as I told her, “I just don’t know what to write.”
In the most tender voice she said, “that’s when it’s the most important that you go to the page.”
More words were exchanged before we ended our conversation with her just saying, “keep writing.”
So today, I write. I write because it’s not enough to just translate the pain. I write because it’s not enough to just be desperate for Him when it’s hard. I write because it’s not enough to be content with being not okay. I write because the grace that flows down daily covering me, gives me a reason to write. I write because it’s not enough to just be lost anymore.
Here is to being found.
Here is to learning to be okay.
Here is to finding Jesus is the everyday moments
Here is to learning to translate the joy.
“All is okay here. You are free to go on your way,” the officer said.
On my way I will go…
Still learning,
Adria
