I so badly wanted to stage a really pretty picture of my desk and computer, maybe with some fresh daisies behind it.  Whatever.  This is what my writing space actually looks like right now.  And Cannon has been watching Daniel Tiger for 45 minutes.  There.  Now you know.

“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”  Jeremiah 2:13

These words have been swirling in my heart for weeks now.  I’m watching the minutes change on the top right of my computer screen, but the sentences are forming at a crawling pace.  It’s hard for me to say these things, to admit out loud my struggle, to tell you the truth.  But for the sake of my own accountability, I’m going to say it all.

Writing can be a little bit hard, did you know that?  Not the act itself.  In fact, for me, the word crafting is usually the fun, easy part where I get to think out loud and pray over my communication and see sentences in front of me that I sometimes didn’t even mean to say, but they sound ok so I keep them around.  The hard part comes from wanting so badly to manage the reception of my words from, well, everyone who reads them.  (I.e. Every writer wants you to like them.  Period). 

There is a little bit of non-prescribed magic in writing.  You have to find your way very apart from the way of others.  You have to speak your voice very apart from the voice you think will make you popular.  You have to pray an unbelievable amount.  You have to give in a bit to the unpredictability of it all, blow words like a wishing flower from your hands and hope they land on hearts they way you intend them to rather than being blown away by the wind.  Writing is obedience, discipline, laughing at yourself, insecurity, vulnerability, confidence and lightness all at once.  It is communicating something you believe in or simply want to share with others, and then it’s actually living what you just wrote and that, my friends, is one reason why I write: you all know a lot of my junk and I can sleep better at night knowing that I’ve been honest. 

I really do not like the word blog when used as a verb.  I would much rather think of myself as a writer than a blogger.  So I will say it this way: I’ve been writing essays for the internet for just over five years.  That means for five years I have wanted my work to be received, enjoyed, shared, commented on, affirmed.  For five years I have wrestled with the beast of approval addiction, sometimes pinning that bad boy with a “my heart is content no matter what people think” attitude, but more often being heavily beaten to the ground with a “what do people really think of me?” insecurity.  If you only knew what a hot mess I am.  Like anyone who does work that the public views in one way or another—a photographer, an actor, a musician, a you-name-it—the way people feel about your work really matters.  Even when you don’t want it to, it does.   

And that’s what I’m writing about today.  My work as a writer.  Because I might burst if I don't, and because I need the reminder.  Last month something a little bit crazy happened: a lot of people read my essays.  And some of those people seemed to enjoy them.  And it felt really, really good.  Better than I am proud to admit.  When I started writing with my best friend Kristin five years ago, the people who read our work were mostly our families and few dozen closest friends.  And that was always enough, too.  I actually don’t have any idea how it happened that a few thousand people found their way to Just Enough Brave in the last few months, because I don’t even know a few thousand people.  It can really only be that some of you are sharing my words (and that’s the absolute best complement you can give a writer, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you.)

Can I also share with you something?  Last week I wrote out my love story with Alex during a week that we fought almost daily about one issue in particular.  I cannot tell you how much your words of encouragement filled my soul after I published that essay. I was so thankful people connected to the story I told.  I always hope you do.  But in the three days that followed, I had two emotional meltdowns (I mean the sobbing, angry, threw a sippy cup on the floor kind) and actually used these words with my husband: “I need to go away from everyone.”  And Alex and I are still working our way through misunderstandings on the same issue.  Why on earth am I telling the world this?  Well, because I still want you to know my junk.  I am an approval addict.  And your approval of me is one of my broken cisterns.  You loved my love story.  I feel like I owe it to you all say both "thank you" and "we are messier than that sweet picture would ever let on." Like any addiction, approval is something that once you get what you are looking for, the high lasts only a few minutes.  A very few minutes.  And approval might well be the most fleeting thing in the world. 

You know what kind of writer I don’t want to be: the one concerned with numbers.  At the very same time, numbers are affirmations!  Confidence!  Cup-fillers!  Oh my!  A few dozen of my closest friends and family reading my words, awesome.  A few thousand of you?  Well please excuse me while I go hide because that is paralyzing.  Thrilling— doesn’t any artist of any kind want that?  And paralyzing—because not really, I’m insecure in my own expectations, I really don’t need any more.  And this happens all at the same moment.  Someone please explain that tension to me because I cannot understand nor manage it.

I so deeply hope what I am saying here is understood.  I fear being misunderstood more than I can say.  But here I am, just blowing these words from my hands: I am not a “big writer” by any means.  Those two words in quotes there are a bit laughable.  I’m on the left side of the bell curve here, I’m very aware of this.  But I did not start writing because I aspired to any sort of notoriety, and I do not keep writing because I aspire to it today.  I just write because, well, it’s what I do.  I was an English major, writing essays is, like, what we are supposed to do to stay in the club (kidding).  Honestly, I just want my words to matter for God’s kingdom, and I want my babies to have them when they are old enough to care.  But with even a little bit more than normal attention on these words and I’m tempted to write for the audience rather than writing for the One I’ve always wanted to honor the most, and that’s Jesus. 

Writing this is my reminder that the God who never changes is the only performance review that lasts beyond the short moments of this life.  And my writer’s manifesto is actually the same as my life manifesto: To know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified…to be regarded as a servant of Christ and steward of the mysteries of God… and to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which we have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  Amen. 

I went downstairs to my office, determined to “simplify.”  We have to make room for another baby now, and that means (gulp) my office’s days are numbered.  My beautiful, gray striped walls, big white desk, vintage chair office.  I spent hours making this room over with the vision of a quiet, creative space where words and ideas and inspiration flowed aplenty.  But now it is time to say goodbye, to make room for toddler beds and a dresser full of little clothes.  I have mostly made peace with this, because in all honestly much of my writing happens at our kitchen table, accompanied by my great friends Curious George and Daniel Tiger.  But there is one thing I cannot, just cannot, part with.

My books.

I had every intention of walking in to that office and coming back upstairs with a big box of giveaways. Instead I spent twenty minutes rationalizing why almost every single one of them must find a new home in this house, because I cannot let them go anywhere.

I picked up Cold Tangerines and remembered that sweet flight from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. in 2009 when I devoured every single word.  Shauna Niequist became the patron saint of writing for thousands of young women with her words in that book, and I have no shame admitting that I was—still am—among them.  I devoured Bittersweet the day it arrived on bookshelves, feeling comforted by the solidarity I found in her journey of many uncertain years as I faced two long years of knee surgeries and crutches and never-ending therapy.

I grabbed A Reason for God and was instantly brought back to a dorm room in New Jersey where I would stay up well past the time my little soccer campers were sound asleep, grappling with an intellectual side of faith I had never known before.  I looked at all my underlines in John Ortberg’s and C.S. Lewis’ books, marveling at all that truths some of the great Christian writers and thinkers taught me about a faith I had claimed since childhood but really knew only the Sunday school version of.

I saw To Kill and Mockingbird and Native Son, books I read as a junior in high school that changed everything for me.  These books made me a reader.  A real reader.

And then there were the other fiction books that I adored: Redeeming Love and The Help, books that kept me up late and found a way in to my purse everywhere I went; because you never know when you might have to wait ten minutes somewhere and could be reading.

There are the books that made me love teaching, think about teaching, get mad about the injustice of education in many places in our country, and then want to become a better teacher.  I am forever indebted to Jonathan Kozol for opening my eyes in Amazing Grace, a book I have read over and over and shared over and over.

Of course there is Radical and Interrupted and 7, the White Umbrella and Somebody’s Daughter.  I learned that it is a good thing when something breaks your heart through these books, and I discovered perhaps for the first time in my adult life that finding and loving Jesus means losing yourself.  I’m still desperately trying to live that out, but returning to these words always clears the path a little more.

For most of these treasures, I can remember where I was when I was reading them: the library at Arizona State; the starbucks in State College, Pennsylavnia; the hammock in my parents back yard under a warm, blue, California sky.  And I can remember many of those seasons; when I was in school or single or hurting or growing in my faith in brand new ways—sometimes all of those things at once.  I can remember the inspiration in the middle and the sadness when I came to the last page.  These books bring me back to people and seasons and places as much as any picture possibly could.  And I know that is why I cannot say goodbye.

Words have always been the most beautiful thing to me. They shaped me, encouraged me, challenged me, taught me.  These books that I love and hold on to each tell their own story, but they help make the story of my life, too.  They are the reason I write my own words, today.  Touching these books again has reminded me who I want to be, and what I want to fill our home with.  They have reminded me to turn off the tv, to let my kids find me reading and learning, and to teach them that it is a beautiful gift to give someone your words, your stories.

I want to spend my life adding to this collection, this story that books are telling me. I can’t wait to give Harper and Cannon and baby #3 some of these very words, and I can’t wait to learn what books become part of their story.  

I still have dreams to read some of the classics I have not gotten to yet, to finish Les Miserable in its entirety, to visit the New York Public Library and smell the old pages of so much history, so many words shared.  I have these aspirations to keep learning, and to remind me to keep putting my words on paper, too.  When I line up all the words in my life, the ones I read and the ones I write, I want them to tell the story of a thinker and hearer, someone who laughed and appreciated other perspectives, and someone who humbly submitted that she would never have it all together.  But mostly, I hope they tell they story of someone in love with Jesus and longing above everything else to know who He really is.

So let’s keep reading, y’all.  Books are still a greater invention than the smart phone.