I spent this past weekend at the Allume conference. By the time I decided to attend Allume it was sold out because I am an excellent planner. Then I lucked into a ticket and started reading the blogs of others who were attending and I became nervous that I wouldn’t fit in on account of how I don’t write beautiful spiritual prose here like many of the women who’s words I was reading. I mean, I love Jesus and all but I write about things like how random elderly people chase me down in WalMart and scold me for assaulting people with my Taylor Swift perfume or how my two year old pretends to play with knives so that I’ll stop hiding from her.
(Pretending. She’s just pretending, y’all.)
And most of them had the words “Jesus” or “Faith” or “Hope” or something in the title. Do y’all even know what it says on the top of this blog? ONLY SLIGHTLY NEUROTIC.
So there’s that.
Then there is the fact that sometimes I am not sure when to stop talking. Like, for example, if I’m talking to someone and they aren’t giving me any verbal affirmations or non-verbal clues to go by then I assume they want to keep hearing ALL OF MY WORDS. I think some of y’all don’t believe me when I tell you that I have a tendency towards awkward but do you go to dinner with a bunch of strangers and try to force them to drink your coffee? I don’t mean as in, convince them to like your favorite brand. I mean actually thrust your half-drunk cup of coffee in their face and insist that they try yours because noone fixes coffee better than you. I DON’T EVEN KNOW.
(On the other hand, I met another girl who nervously talked to Ann Voskamp about her boobs. Not her own boobs. Ann’s boobs. So she won the award for “Most Potentially Awkward Interaction” and obviously I made her my new best friend.)
So I was nervous.
Plus, I wasn’t going to know one single person other than my friend Jess and she wasn’t even arriving until the end of the weekend, by which time the smile booth was only shooting GIFs and we were all “WHAT DO WE DO?!” and ended up with the above. Those awkward photos of me look exactly like all of my high school yearbook photos.
I sat in workshops about writing with the intention of being better at telling stories.
I live in the belief that each and every one of our lives is a story in motion, with pens scratching and pages turning and together we are creating something epic.
Like Harry Potter, only SO MUCH BETTER.
And I love telling my stories because it is when I weave words together to create a connection that evokes emotion that I feel alive and poured out with purpose.
But I can’t tell them all. I can’t write all the words and I can’t push publish on pain because not all stories are meant to be shared in every space.
They don’t all belong to me.
And so I am as authentic as this screen allows but I am not fully known.
She was a stranger when we got in the line for lunch and by the time our silverware clattered on the table our hands were grasped and she took hold of that pain I spoke but don’t write and she shared it with me and we are kindred.
Strains of “It Is Well With My Soul” were sung out over the room and I remembered singing it brokenly over my broken baby in a dark room and a dark place. He was there with me then and He is here with me now and I lifted my voice to join the chorus because it is the past broken that lets me know that I am not alone in the current broken.
And there were writing workshops and amazing opportunities and sweet people and new friends and if you have a chance to go next year you should but if all I had left with this weekend was that moment then it would have been worth it.
I loved meeting some of y’all in person and putting names to faces and hands to hearts and growing together in community.
May the secret hungers of your heart harvest from emptiness it’s sacred fruit.
May your solitude be a voyage into the wilderness and Wonder of God.
~David Walker, Allume 2013
