For the past decade, doctors and psychologists have been taking notice of the health benefits of reflective writing. They note that wrestling with words to put your deepest thoughts into writing can lift your mind from depression, provide insight, and offer a healing wisdom within your experiences. Similarly, a recent news article discussed the benefits of confessional writing, where one is freed to explore the depths of the emotional junkyard.
Indeed there is so much ugliness around us, writing is one way to sift through the mess. But its effectiveness is most significant when we learn from reflection, not merely revel in the messes. You see, the eye of a writer seeks the transcendent. Moments where you behold the extraordinary in the ordinary. Glimpses of clarity within the junkyard. The beauty of God in a godless world. Writing is a tool with which we learn to see ourselves more clearly, and a catalyst for which we can learn to see God.
In the C.S. Lewis novel, Till we have Faces, the main character, Orual, has taken mental notes throughout her life, carefully building what she refers to as her "case" against the gods. Finally choosing to put her case in writing, she describes each instance where she had been wronged. It is only after she has finished writing that she soberly recognizes her great mistake. To have heard herself making the complaint was to be answered. She now sees the importance of uttering the speech at the center of one's soul, profoundly observing that the gods used her own pen to probe the wounds. With sharpened insight Orual explains, "Till the words can be dug out of us, why should [the gods] hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?"
Such an illustration brings to mind the intimate descriptions of life recorded in the Psalms. Writing to express loneliness, joy, even frustration with God, the Psalmist always walks away from his words with a clearer sense of reality.
Have you dared to utter the words at the center of your soul? What if God could use your own pen to probe the wounds of your life? Try writing through your struggles; giving words to your doubt, your pain, or your anger. In the beginning, Jesus Christ was the Word who brought life into existence. May your own words heed this creative drive and bring you to a richer knowledge of yourself and, ultimately, of God.
Ravi Zacharias
