THE WORD

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. I wonder how many times John wrote and rewrote those words, shuffled them around, scratched them out and started over, banged his head on the table, read them aloud to himself, second guessed, edited and re-edited to get it just right. He was inspired, there’s not a doubt in my mind about that. Those words are solid rock Truth.

Words are big. They’re the stuff of beginnings. They fall firmly into the realm of stuff God does - parting waters, making the sun stand still, burning bushes, casting words across the universe. Even before nothing formed into something, God had voice and God was speaking.

I wonder if God feels the acid in the belly after the words are out there. I wonder if the Godhead ever reflects, Wow, We know so many different kinds of people, and they all know different parts of Us. There are a lot of people We really care about who actually have no idea who We even are. What We really want to say is going to seriously affect the way they think about Us, and they might not even get it. Let Us choose Our words very, very carefully. Nobody writes a story like God does, yet even God only got six chapters in before being flooded with a desire to bury the whole sorry thing under a 40 day avalanche of rain.

I feel my own words in my belly, in the back of my throat, behind my knees. I shape them carefully, I wrestle with them and yet they still come out wrong. They burn my lips and I vomit them onto strangers.

Writing is riskier than a tattoo. When you tell people you want to write, they should caution you. They should say, “Imagine you at 90. Are you going to be able to live with those words you write 50 years from now when your mind is shrivelled? When some stranger is giving you a bath in a care home, how will you feel about the written word then?” If you’re going to write something down, you have to be sure that it’s what you really want to say, that you could say it out loud to your husband or your mother or a stranger and it would still be true, and that you will still be glad you wrote it how you did even if it disappoints – even if it twists and sags and morphs over time.