Frustrated, I want my words to march across the page in orderly rows and stay where I put them and say exactly what I mean them to say, and I don't want it to take much effort. Sometimes they just come; and sometimes they don't. I'm not sure what makes the difference.
I want my words to be like the animals in the Sunday School version of Noah's Ark, filing onboard. In easily recognizable groups; docile, well-behaved, directed by God, disinterested in eachother, content to quietly serve their purpose in the grander scheme of things. Instead, they are more like how I imagine the filling of the ark (and the days leading up to it) really was: rather loud at times, and overwhelming. Things getting stepped on, crying, complaining, clamoring for attention. The predatory animals gobbling down just a few of the meeker variety... Words roam and ramble around my head and across these pages, chasing one another like hunters and hunted. Like lions and zebras. Not all of them are pretty. Not all of them are even neccessary. Not all of them make sense -- but here they are. And though the capacity comes from God, they are mostly not directed by God, but by me; by my small, willful, stubborn, ignorant, frightened, stumbling-in-the-darkness self.
And yet... I wonder if God doesn't really like all his own messy stories much better than our cleaned up retellings?
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