I’ve been stuck. Stuck in the burnt rusty part of the bottom of my un-stirred simmering word stew pot. Doubting the value of my words, my writing, and consequently, my Me.
That’s what happens when I don’t write.
You’d think by now I would realize how very important the act of writing is to my well-being (and for everyone else’s around me! Just ask Sandy…). Even when my soul is crushed under the weight of my doubts, even when my mental gremlins are having a party at my expense, I doubt the importance of my writing.
I guess I find it hard to believe that something that I enjoy so very much can be so important to me. Kinda like broccoli – I love it, but it’s also it’s healthy for me… SCORE!
Yet time and time again, when I finally Just Write … about ANYthing… 
something shifts inside me. My longings become hopes and beliefs. My pain becomes a glimpse into the searing fire of intense beauty. My senses lose their heavy fog and become an endless supply of fuel for my soul.And my tears flow from my pen as exquisite multi-faceted diamonds.
So today I post this on my blog to remind myself that I don’t just want to write. I NEED to write.
There’s an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s incredible book, Letters to a Young Poet, that takes my breath away every time I read it, like this morning when it coaxed out a few tears of understanding:
“Search for the reason that bids you write, find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all – -ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity, your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it.”
In the stillest hour of my night, I know without a doubt that yes, I must write. So I am. And I will.
And I ask you… what is your “writing” – that activity that can give you purpose in the still of the night? Whatever it is, no matter how great or how seemingly small, just do it.
Portrait by Jill Wiebe-King
Take the Van Gogh quote that whispers to me as I sit here writing: “If you hear a voice within you saying, You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint…and that voice will be silenced.”
So go… Just Write… Just Paint… just Express You. I know already that we’ll love it.
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