Writing to be Real - Gloria Guest

I think I basically write to be real. If I’m not going to be real, what’s the point? Writing is where I am at my best in expressing authenticity.

As someone who can sometimes have too quick of a tongue or be a bit too blunt in my personal conversations, I love the fact that in writing my keyboard has a delete button. Something sounds not quite right? Delete. That wasn’t said the way I intended? Delete. Start again and this time say it better.

I find that writing has far more grace for my particular  communication foibles than talking does. In my conversations I’ve had many times where I wished that I could take back a word, or two or more. With my written words, I can. Delete. It’s great. J

My personal blog is based around the theme of Hope. As someone who came from a difficult childhood and has spent my adult years recovering from it, I have found hope to be my anchor. And so in finding that hope it is my desire to share it with others. Hope is the solid cord that is found woven through all of my writing and that cord leads to the source of my hope which is God and His faithfulness.

In talking about being real I would like to add that I don’t always feel hope or even follow its light. I have dark days and times where I wonder if God cares or is listening or has forgotten all about me. I have days when I look around at the world and wonder the same thing. Is God even with us or has He just wound up the world like a giant clock and is letting it tick down?

The Chaplin of the Humboldt Bronco’s hockey team, Sean Brandow, spoke about this in his message after the tragic bus crash on a lonely Saskatchewan highway,

#Humboldt Strong

 that took sixteen lives and injured all remaining.

‘Where was God?’ he stated at the vigil. He had been on the scene and saw the twisted wreckage and the dead and wounded. He felt as if he was in the valley of the shadow of death. And he was. But then later in the week he was reminded of the other half of the verse that states, “I will fear no evil for thou art with me.” His message went around the world. He was real and that’s what drew people to want to listen. He didn’t hold back his raw emotions and his questioning of God. I believe his message drew many to God.

May my writing be as real as that Chaplin’s heart felt words were.

May I allow people more than a just a tiny glimpse into my soul and then a quick cover-up. May my writing reveal a deep gaze into who I am and where I’ve been because I don’t have to give in to fear. Sure, people will see my pain and failures but through that may they see God, piercing through the fog of my life as the light from a lighthouse searches out the waters saying, ‘This is the way. Come home.’

May it lead them home too.

Gloria shares messages of hope from the small hamlet of Caron, Sask. You can read her blog by clicking here.