It happens more often than I care to admit: some marvelous, lightening-strike idea will explode in my mind, and I will say: that would make a great blog post. Or, some little mundane, everyday little occurrence will develop but with a slightly new light to it or fresh context, and I will say again: that would make a great blog post. Blogging, writing, bleeding out: it’s all the same. Ernest Hemingway once said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” How true that is! I’ve often said that sharing your God-given testimony and writing daily, God-given testimonies are like catching the same breed of fish and gutting it, exposing the insides. For a writer, every sentence is exposing something of oneself, being brutally honest and sharing that bare-bones honesty with the world. Whether it’s blogging about a Day in the Life of our Homeschool, or The Day my Husband Left or the pain experienced by holding one’s father’s head as the stroke sears itself across his face, taking the life from him…it’s all bleeding out onto the page. Bloggers share well. We share these things, this stuff of life, to help encourage others that they are not alone. We share these things that people are shocked about – not because we go through it, but there is someone else going through it too. We take a message and we share it with the world, hoping beyond hope to encourage some other soul with it. We have this need, this rampant desire, to get the words out before they eat us alive – or worse, far worse: dry up and don’t ever come. We do it; we have to do it. Even when we pour ourselves out onto the page as a drink offering, like Paul wrote in 2nd Timothy 4:6 and we post the blog, check back to see the stats – you know you do it – and there it is: someone has written a nasty comment. And you read that comment and you think, “They don’t even know me…” That comment stays with you, despite many hundreds of people sharing what they loved about your post, but that one comment…it’s like someone finding the knife that is permanently lodged in your writer’s heart and turning it. Slowly. In front of your children. Would they dare say that to me in my own living room? You ask. Of course not. The anonymity and isolation of the Internet assures people have false senses of confidence. It’s easy to say mean things as you browse the Internet in your jammies. Those types of comments, the ones that don’t leave us for days and days, they are there to distract us from the bigger purpose: to keep on writing. To encourage. To share the living daylights out of our living daylights. God has given us the talent and skill, and the spiritual gifts to exhort, encourage, disciple – and we cannot turn our back on those who need to hear a word, or, bless them – The Word. Habakkuk 2:3-4 says it all: “Then the Lord replied: ‘Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.’” Bloggers write ideas and testimonies that come to us in the middle of the night, in the shower, in the car, everywhere – with the incredible hope that we will bless others with what we write. Therefore, in a way, we make plain these revelations that God provides so that others may “run with it” and be blessed. Sometimes these ideas don’t come, and we stare at the computer screen and pray and ask God for something – anything – as we’ve made ourselves a deadline. This is a testimony of God’s faithfulness in itself: “though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” By blessing others with our writing, we are also blessed, for it is in using our God-given gifts and talents that we tithe and give back to God what He has given us. Writing is as necessary as breathing to bloggers and writers alike, though it be a blog post or novel. Be blessed, dear blogger; be encouraged. What you are doing is blessing others with ideas that you bleed out onto the page. In Him, Terrie McKee © 2015
2 Comments
4/21/2015 09:16:51 am
How easy it is to get discouraged by the hurtful comments, or the comments that never come {my personal struggle}. I do try to continue to bleed those words, because I hope that someone, somewhere needs to hear what I'm saying.
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