Anchor

Tell me: what is your anchor, what you trust and know and can come home to over and over in your writing?

If an anchor is a source of stability and security, mine is my relationship with God. I feel truthful and flowing, almost electric sometimes, when I write keeping God closely in mind. No matter the topic I find it important to speak my deep truth, even if I'm ostensibly seeming flippant. Sure there is time for frivolities, but real is real, truth is truth and God grounds me in that. I find myself imagining a time when all people just operate in their truth instead of hiding and ignoring or, worse yet, pretending that they are. I guess this is what I found so refreshing about visiting a rehab. They are all revealing as much truth as they possibly can and that helps to anchor them in the world so they can operate better. Why, I wonder, don't we all do that together? I guess it's because all of our sins and problems vary so out in the world that some could be construed as more shocking and awful than others. So we hide them. In rehab, every one's dirty laundry has a similar odor, it doesn't much matter which sock or pair of undies falls out of the basket.

There are sections of this book, this memoir how-to which I am exploring, that ask personal questions. What was the great burden you carried? What aches? What do you know that you didn't want to know? What are the things that should never be said and right here you are going to say them? I have answers for all of them and I want to answer all of them and honestly. But I draw the line, for now, at more superficial things, things that people talk about, things that people expect to read about. I don't really know why other than the expectations of others, because I feel most anchored when I am honest and open, even if it is uncomfortable. And I have little fear of "people knowing," though I don't want to hurt my loved ones, or anyone else. He sort of takes the sting out of that, since He is the ultimate knower, judge and Father. And He knows everyone else's stuff too.

So why be coy and pretend I couldn't write chapters on "things that should never be said?" Or pretend I haven't lugged and nursed burdens before I learned to give them up to Jesus? (And may still a few I haven't noticed yet?) One thing I've seen, brighter and more lovely than a flower in springtime, is when I have opened up and told someone about some trial I've been through, confessed a sin or revealed a pain, that someone invariably pulls the cork and lets some of theirs out too. What could be bad about that? I don't really know.

I think God and truth are my anchors and if I don't apply them to my writing there doesn't seem to be a point to doing it at all.