July 1st. Confession.

I am afraid. There. I said it. Out loud. Well sort of out loud. At least its on paper. And truthfully as I read back over it is screaming out loud to me. I am afraid. I fear. I am terrified.

I told my grandpa that I was afraid the other day and he basically laughed at me. He told me that I moved across the country to go to school in California and now I am moving across the world to be a missionary. There is no way that I can be afraid of anything! I was very flattered by that but at the same time humbled. I have no problem trusting God’s way for my life and it has been obvious by my life choices. So what could I possibly be afraid of?

I am afraid of writing. Writing? Yes, writing. I am afraid of my thoughts on paper for all the world to see. What is quite ironic about this is that I have been writing for as long as I can remember. From a very young age I started keeping journals. I am not sure what motivated me to start but what kept me going was that what I was thinking and feeling at the time was real and important and I knew as soon as experience crept its way in to my life I would forget what it felt like. I wrote to remember what it felt like. So then one day when I have kids, I would be able to say to them “I know exactly how you feel” and mean it. I don’t want to say “You’ll understand when you are older” even though truthfully they will understand when they are older. I want to say I understand now and I get you on your level. As a child and teenager I remember thinking that no one had ever felt that way before and therefore no one could ever understand me. And truthfully no one tried to understand me, at least from my perception. And maybe my perception could not have been changed but maybe it could have. And maybe I could have understood then, not when I was older. And maybe I would have avoided some of the mistakes I made. But that’s another story for another time. Back to the point.

I am afraid. I am afraid of writing. In fact, I am afraid right now while I am writing. And you are here to help me. You are here to help me understand my fear and realize it before it gets the best of me.

Why I am afraid? What am I afraid of?

I am afraid that I will be bad at it. And I am not writing this to elicit comments telling me that actually I am a great writer and I can do it. I am writing it as a complete and honest confession. I am afraid that I will be bad at it. That people won’t like it. That people will think what I write is stupid. Which will happen. Even if I am the greatest writer that ever put a pen to paper, not everyone is going to like what I write. Not everyone’s life is going to be changed by the greatness that is my writing. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t want to know that its bad. I like what I write, how I write, what I write about. And I don’t really need to hear that its bad. So instead of risking it I keep it to myself. However, two problems arise from this.

If I keep it to myself, then no one is affected by it good or bad. No one else benefits from it. Which is the opposite of God’s design for our gifts which leads to point number 2.
If I don’t share my writing, then I begin to question what is the point of writing at all? And I convince myself that writing is not a gift of mine but rather just a hobby or something I do for stress release.

And that is where I am at this moment. I am convinced that writing is not a gift of mine but rather something I just do that I can do if I want or not do if I don’t want. I don’t need to share it because its “personal”, its mine. Which is not the case.

Chris and I just finished Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University (highly recommended) and he talks about being a “good steward” of God’s money. Being a steward literally means the manager of someone else’s financial affairs. I never realized that before and it has changed my entire perception of how I look at the money in my bank account. And as Dave says “It’s really easy to give away someone else’s money.”

So back to spiritual gifts. I often pray that I will be a good steward of the gifts God has given me. And I pray that He will help me to know what those gifts are and use them for His glory. So if we are using the same definition of steward, it would stand to reason that the gifts I have been given are not mine at all but in reality are God’s. And by not using them, I am as bad as the servant in the Parable of Talents who hides his talent in the ground and gains His master nothing (Matthew 25:14-30).

And so here we are. The goal now it find a way to eradicate this fear and being to truly use my gift for God’s glory.

So we begin. Stay tuned for more.