A Real, Raw Post About an Upcoming Project

I have not blogged in quite some time, despite it being one of my favorite pastimes. To be quite honest, I have had other writing projects on my mind. I have been reading Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, hoping it will deliver me some key to the art I have been missing all of this time. His secret to writing: "write a lot, read a lot"  I can’t say that I’ve read much in years, and if I am altogether honest with myself, even when I did read I am what you call a “skimmer.” Ok, not Harry Potter or anything but all of that classic literature I was supposed to be reading in school, well, what college student has time for that? So yes, now I am kicking myself for that sort of blasé attitude I have harbored towards reading literature that might actually help me become a better writer. As for King’s other suggestion, I must say, I do enjoy writing. So even though I have resolved to put 85% of my writing energy into a novel, I do not think that excuses me from keeping a blog. Simply because I enjoy it. Now, to pick up a fiction book….hmmm

One day I was sitting on the couch and turned to Paul, “I want to write a novel.” You may catch some of these next few lines in my preface, because yes, I have already begun to plan it. But in case you wondered, it is a cheesy, romance novel, because hey, I am a cheesy, romantic kind of girl. I could hardly write anything but. These questions started rising in my heart,

Can someone who cannot trust learn to?
Can someone who cannot receive love learn to? 
Can someone locked in a prison of their past be set free?

Of course I know these things to be true because I’ve seen them happen in my own life, even if I am still on a journey for wholeness. It can happen. I look at my life and just see a blanket of overwhelming grace covering everything that I have done, and will do, and so these questions for me, are yes. A hundred times yes. But what about everyone else? After all, that is what ultimately salvation is about, to me, bringing people into freedom, not just “living with Jesus in their hearts.” I began to ask the questions because I know someone who raised them. His own story, if told truthfully, is checkered by a battered, abusive past, an emotionally absent father, and as irony would have it, religion. It would be safe to say that he has no moral compass in this world. He has been intimate with close to hundreds of the opposite sex, using him with no intentions of commitment, taunting them because he can. There is a chance he’s an addict. He is brash, and sarcastic, and borders on obnoxious, as if you couldn't deduce that on your own thanks to his other redeeming qualities. He is the most broken person I have ever met. And I began dreaming, scheming, asking God how someone like him could break free of his chains.

Since I was a little girl, struggling with my “issues” with men even then, I had this preconceived notion that really, good sex could fix anything. Ask my Barbie’s. As I got older, I found out overwhelmingly, that not to be the case. In fact, that idea sent my life into a spiral of heartache and despair that as a happily married woman I have only begun to crawl from. I talk about intimacy in such a way, but honestly it was love I thought to be the real catalyst for change. But if you’ve ever thought marriage would solve your significant other’s problems, you probably found out in the most difficult way that it doesn’t happen. Because guess what, it doesn’t, that is my most simply put response. The heart is not something to trust, I have discovered by allowing it to lead me places I never should have ventured. And if we’re honest with ourselves, very rarely do two people enter into a marriage whole or free.

So I set out to write. To explore those phenomenon’s of broken people. A man and a woman, neither who can trust or receive love, trying to solve all of their problems with the pursuit of it. The two of them are forced into an arranged marriage, as they are royalty. The heroine of my story, naturally, thinks love will conquer all. Sappy, romantic, sort of love. Though she is plagued with her own setbacks, such as fear that consumes her life.

The hero has sworn off feeling. Given his abusive past, he will not consent to such love, nor can he trust. These two, married, cannot bring themselves to consummate a marriage given the scars from their past. But is freedom for them? I can’t tell. I just do not know. I did, at once. I had an idea of how I wanted them to come remarkably together, stripping away their reservations (and clothes, if I’m honest) in a grove of wildflowers and being whole for the first time. Just before she tells her fear to the wind, and he pours his wine into a nearby stream.

I have to ask myself, how often does that happen? I hate to be such a cynic but I happen to be the daughter of an addict that didn’t recover, the friend to many who find themselves in chains, and try as they may, they cannot be set free. I also happen to be a person still contending for 100% freedom from bondage. I lay in my bed just last night, unable to sleep for fear that my house would catch on fire and I wouldn’t be able to get to my kids in time. I woke up twice to unplug things in the kitchen. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit, I reasoned. Or maybe I’m just utterly mad. Whatever it is, I can hardly finish this novel now. Because I don’t want the wife of an alcoholic to read it and wonder why her husband can’t pour his habit out. I recall how I once read romance novels, really cheesy ones most of my life and came to find that marriage, or my marriage, is nothing close. I don’t want to be a liar. Because alcoholics don’t usually find freedom, people trapped in anxiety will take medicines their entire lives so they can't feel, not even the good stuff, and people who cannot be loved will have all of the sex in the world and never get a taste of intimacy.

So, what kind of novelist would I be if there were no resolve in the end of my story? I’ll tell you, one that doesn’t sell a single book.

I guess that’s the point. People want to believe there is hope. I want to believe there is, that’s why I started this project. I know Jesus did not die in vain, we can be free. I also am not ignorant to the woes of the world. I do not think it is effortless. I do not think that 12 steps and a memorized prayer can save our lives. I know firsthand that freedom is something that you have to fight for, for the pursuit of such is the anthem of all written history.

If you decide to buy my book, and read it- I hope you do. Know this, I am not naïve for a second. I am sitting on the other side of this keyboard thinking, “People just don’t get free like this! I am such a pathetic dreamer!” But on the same token here, I have to believe it. I have to. Or there is just no reason for a transformative gospel.

So I sigh, and doubt myself every second, but I do not doubt that freedom is not as far off as we imagine. It is close. It is in Him.

   
I consistenly listen to these lyrics as I write my novel:

"In the glory of your presence, I find rest for my soul.
In the depths of your love, I find peace, makes me whole."

"Give your heart to Jesus, there is freedom.
Give your heart to Jesus, there is freedom....
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom."