Create with Confidence – Denise M. Ford

As writers we have an affinity with words that naturally leads us to opportunities to delve into ways that will expand our minds.  We live to unleash our words to our unseen audiences.  We read and shelve books into our storehouse of knowledge so that we can refine our writing craft. We seek out courses and conferences to engage with fellow writers.  We struggle to comprehend how to use the newest technology available to us.

Thank goodness we have the humility and the awareness to understand that we can learn from someone else’s skill or experience!

But where oh where and when oh when do we learn to create with confidence?

If anything, we as writers sometimes feel stripped down and torn apart by our lack of confidence.  We as Christian writers remind ourselves that we need to humbly appreciate a talent that may lead us astray.  We don’t want to get lost in avenues of pride and chasms of vanity.  As writers we can become immersed within our own viewpoints of interpretation. We easily fall into judgemental quips or objective summaries.

Confidence, where does it begin and how do we let it guide us?

This past week I found it in the pool.  My usual process for searching for the ideas for this writing blog follows a pattern: praying for a phrase, listening for repeated whispers, and then letting the phrase move out on its own. As it hovers in my mind, I find a way to expand and explore its meaning.

This week I let it swim around with me.  I have always enjoyed swimming from an early age. Now in my not so early age I have turned to deep-water running as a way to exercise and gain energy.  I used to participate in classes but now I appreciate the softer sounds of the early morning pool music. Instructors tend to shout above the beats of their favourite motivating music.  I prefer to move through my own routine so I can pray or listen for words to surprise me!

The fact is, I am short.  In the pool I can only touch bottom in five feet or under, making a deep-water workout easily achievable.  I can cross country ski or bicycle in the water on the edges of most areas of the pool.  Usually I don’t venture into an area that would leave me treading to survive, because I do not use a buoyancy belt.

Years ago, at my first deep-water running class, I had to learn how to adjust a waist belt to act like a lifesaver while I floundered in the depths of the deep water.  I even bought my own belt, so I didn’t have to struggle with a different belt each time I went to class.  Soon I learned the various techniques and methods to activate the muscle groups of my body to stay afloat in the routines.  Being comfortable in water, I stopped using the belt and found I could gain a more challenging workout without it.  I had the necessary confidence to adapt the movements to suit my individual workout. 

I rely on my swimming movements to keep me above the water.  I can confidently do that because I know how to swim.  I can float, I can push myself above the surface of any water, my confidence does not waver.

However, when the pool’s automatic waves begin and I am jostled about in currents that pull me away from my safe areas, my confidence temporarily slackens.  I do not know when I will lose my sufficiency to stay completely afloat.

Writing ebbs and flows like that for me.  One day I trust wholeheartedly in this creative skill, the next I am floundering about wondering if I should bother to release the ideas that come to mind.  I question whether or not I have the time or the basic foundation to pursue writing.

I need to respond with confidence. 

And here’s the phrase that surfaces:

Confidence buoys us up to create! 

I need to let the words flow as smoothly as the water moving around and below me.  I need to reach out with confidence and claim them as the ideas that need to be rescued and resolved in a piece of writing.

Fellow writers, we yearn to create.  We dive into the deep water of meaning and we hopefully surface with surprising new ideas.  Tools and devices, we have learned from courses, workshops, or books; may or may not stay with us as we strive to schedule our writing routines into our lives.

I hope that as we write we accept a valuable, perhaps new and precious piece of equipment.

Confidence. May confidence buoy us up to create!

Writers, let us continually challenge ourselves.  As we seek to do God’s will through our writing, may we trust in the ways we make various techniques and methods into our own personal writing styles.  May we not waver in the waves of criticism or the currents of distractions. May we place ourselves within the time slots required to make this response as a writer.  May we take pen in hand and write and write and write.  And may confidence, refreshing and invigorating, pour over us. 

May confidence buoy us up to create!

Postscript:

As I highlight the word, confidence, my Biblical index directs me to Psalm 71.

I realize I have always loved the imagery in verse 3.

“Be to me a protecting rock of safety, where I am always welcome.  Give the order to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.”

I can certainly identify with this older Psalm writer who praises God for His faithful presence by tracing the blessings that have occurred throughout a long life. Verse 5 echoes in my writer’s heart and underscores the meaning of the phrase that came to me this past week:

“For you give me confidence, O Lord; O Lord, I have trusted in you since I was young.”