Yesterday, I woke up and my thoughts were poetry. It was like my spirit was singing.

I have words racing through my mind all the time. Yesterday, they were dancing through my mind. They weren’t frantically striving for function… they were playfully and gracefully interacting with one another and finding beauty.

It was like the difference between rushing to a meeting and walking in the mountains, just to walk. Such walks have purpose, but their joy and life isn’t squeezed out for the sake of greater efficiency.

The difference in the words that morning wasn’t a matter of mere pace. The words did move more slowly and casually, at times, just as I may take things in and progress more slowly in a walk through nature. But, in moments, they also had that energized quickness that the mountains so easily awaken in me.

The words were beautiful. There was rhythm… cadence.  It really was like a song.

It felt like the only responsible thing I could do, when I woke up, was to write. Like I needed to join into the dance and play of the words and help them find greater permanence. Of course, the ruling logic of my mind made me go to work instead.

Sometimes I know that I need to write. Sometimes I know that I have something to say.

Most of the time, I think I just want to write. Most of the time, I don’t have a clue what I would say. Why would I write? What could I say that needs to be heard?

I often tell myself I have no profound writing gift, so why bother at all? I’ll back it up with arguments of comparison. Oh, what a terrible destroying force comparison can be! I’ll tell myself that whatever I write would be sub-standard and really more of an embarrassment… to have tried. Maybe I need to stop talking to myself.

Often, I notice that the areas in my life where I am most frustrated with my inability are the areas in which I possess my greatest skills. Maybe I struggle, so frequently, with feeling completely inarticulate because I do have some measure of gift in communication.

However small that measure may be… I need to do something with it. It would be safer to bury it, to hide it, to ignore it. It would be easier to pretend it was not there. Small things are easy to hide. But He knows. And He keeps nudging me to take risks and grow. Oh, that incessant divine nudging.

I need to allow myself room to dream more. I think I need to allow myself to talk to God about the things that I want to do and the places I want to go. Often, He is the one painting the pictures in my mind. It seems rude to call them silly and then discard them, moping afterward because I liked the “silly” picture and it made me smile before I crumpled it up and threw it away.

Patient, gentle kindness. Oh Lord, I need Your help!