I Have to Write!

Three more of my friends buried a parent this past week, but I don’t want Life Matters to be the weekly grief report, so I’m not going there this time.  If I stick with my foundational belief that our lives matter to God, I will sometimes write about how we process the difficult times in life.  I will also sometimes write about how we celebrate the joys in life, stumble through the curiosities of life, and laugh through the bloopers of life.  If our LIVES matter to God, that means that He cares about all of the above!

This week’s Life Matters is my 111^th edition of what started out as an email devotional to members of my church family sometime around 1997.  I should say that there are 111 that can still be found somewhere.  Sometimes you don’t think about how something is going to grow when you first start out and I didn’t keep those early ones.  But since March 9, 1998, I have kept them.  The first 58 can be found in an archive on my website (gerrylewisonline.com). The last 53 of them have appeared online in blog form.  The last 44 of them have appeared as a column in the Azle News.

My hope is that my words each week encourage you on the journey of life.  I love hearing from people who tell me they enjoy my column/blog.  I love it when people ask, “How’s Mrs. Sweetie?”  I know they’ve been reading.  It has been a sincere blessing to have a reason to write every week for almost a year now.

If I had been writing once a week for all those years, I would be over 600 editions by now, but when there was no deadline, no publisher or editor waiting for an email by Monday morning, life sometimes got in the way of writing about life.

You may be wondering where this rambling reminiscence is headed. Part of it is about a realization that I came to a few months ago: Writing is part of why God put me on this planet.  Encouraging, empowering, and (occasionally, hopefully) entertaining people with written words is part of my purpose for living.  When I am not regularly writing, I am less effective in other areas of life.

So, why do I need this weekly deadline to motivate me to do what is so central to my sense of purpose?  Because life happens.  Because the swelling tide of urgency sometimes crashes in until the really important things are swept out into the sea of good intentions.  (Ok, maybe that was a little over the top, but you get the metaphor). The weekly deadline is one of many forms of accountability that serve as anchors that hold me fast to my life’s mission.

There it is.  Accountability.  It is not a hindrance to freedom, but an anchor that keeps us from drifting into such trivialities that we lose our freedom to be the people we were created to be.  What keeps you connected to your life’s mission?  Who could help you by being your “editor”?  How do you want your life to be read?

Let’s keep writing a great story together.