on passion

So, five months away from graduation, this happened:

@emjkelsey ya know, Spanish teachers are great...but you have the soul of a writer. Just sayin' 😊

— Sara Kells (@SaraKells) December 8, 2012

My sweet friend Sara has these lovely, otherworldly eyes that can see straight into your soul. Um, and apparently also through Twitter?!

Anyway. When that little nugget of a reply popped up, I was suddenly very aware of how much I had enjoyed composing my ridiculous fog horn tweet.

Also every tweet I've ever tweeted.

And...right. Everything I've ever written.

What a great moment. "Oh. Of course! I'm a writer."

For me, this was not so much the discovering of passion as the uncovering of it. I grew up with a book (or five) in one hand and a journal in the other. Words are my very old friend.

It's hard to explain why I hadn't already realized this, but I think it had a lot to do with fear. As I began to seriously consider what role writing might have in my life, little anxieties rose to the surface:

"There are already so many other great writers."
"I don't have any credentials."
"What if my writing isn't well-received?"
"Writing won't fit into our lifestyle."
"I'll never make money as a writer."

I'm finding that passion- on its own- is a little terrifying. It's wild and frenetic and raw and unpredictable. I'd prefer passion be coupled with plans or direction or opportunity or validation, because those things feel safe, and passion does not feel safe.

Thankfully, we have a God who is Himself the very embodiment of passion: full, wild, eternal passion. He breathes it into our hearts that we, too, may know a beautiful kind of wild. Our Creator delights in giving us these gifts, and incredibly, they are given in pure grace. God doesn't need me to write, but he enables me to.

How freeing!

So my fear-questions aren't answered, at all, not even a little bit. I don't know if writing could support my family. And it's true that I have no credentials. Maybe I'll never write anything but a blog. Maybe Sara will be the only one who reads my blog. (Um, Sara, now you have to. Sooo...)

But the fear is gone, because the Creator made me a writer. And so I'm going to write.