Blank Pages, New Words

I write. It's what I do. Sometimes what I write is worth reading. Sometimes the greatest hope I have is found on the next blank page. Because on that page is one more chance to get it, well, right.

But over the last several years, there has been an underlying sense in my soul that I'm missing it. I've written I don't know how many words, sentences, paragraphs, pages. Yet, through them all, I have yet to find the perfect combination of vowels and consonants and punctuation marks that will somehow, someway fully define my life.

It all pays out so well in my mind; so poetic.

I'm sitting in a cabin overlooking a pond or a lake. Maybe I'm on the porch. Maybe I'm at a desk next to the fireplace. Either way, I'm definitely in the mountains. It’s all very Walden Pond.

Yet, unlike Thoreau, I'm not writing. Not yet. I'm just sitting there thinking, waiting for that perfect phrase to come to mind. As I wait, memories flood my mind. Relationships, experiences, prayers, successes, failures. But in my mind, I don’t actually write anything. Because all the while I’m still searching.

Maybe in my mind I never actually get that phrase or sentence written down because that’s not what it’s all about. Maybe it’s about discovering those things that God has placed deep in my soul. And slowly, through the ups and down of life, the victories and struggles, the mountaintop adventures and the valleys of defeat, I’m discovering more and more of who I was made to be. And it’s only through discovering that I can begin defining.

Maybe in all the searching, the key is not to miss one thing in hopes of discovering another. Maybe it’s not so much about finding that perfect combination of words as much as it is experiencing the journey, the struggle, the excitement of learning new ones.