I Don't Write From the Wound

I Write Through It.

When I was finishing my manuscript, I found myself reflecting on all of the stories I had chosen not to tell.

Not because they weren't true.

Some of them shaped my life in profound ways.

Not because they didn't hurt.

Some of them still do.

I chose not to tell them because, over and over again, I returned to one simple question.

Will this serve the reader?

If the answer was yes, the story stayed.

If it existed only to explain myself, defend myself, or convince someone else that my pain was justified...

I let it go.

That wasn't easy.

There is a part of all of us that wants to be understood.

A part that wants someone to hear the whole story and finally say,

"Now I understand."

I don't think that desire is wrong.

I think it's deeply human.

But somewhere along the way, I realized something.

I don't write from the wound.

I write through it.

There is a difference.

Writing from the wound often asks the reader to carry our pain.

Writing through the wound offers them hope that healing is possible.

That realization changed not only my writing.

It changed my life.

For years, I gathered evidence of disappointment.

The prayers that weren't answered the way I hoped.

The relationships that changed.

The dreams that quietly came to an end.

The words that wounded me.

The losses I never expected.

Those stones were real.

I don't pretend they weren't.

Healing has never asked me to deny what happened.

Healing has asked me something much more difficult.

What will I choose to gather now?

I can continue building memorials to disappointment.

Or...

I can begin gathering evidence of grace.

That isn't denial.

It isn't pretending painful things never happened.

It isn't choosing selective memory.

It is choosing where I will build my life.

Every morning, I still have that choice.

I can rehearse the conversations that hurt me.

Or I can remember the kindness that found me.

I can count what has been lost.

Or I can give thanks for what remains.

I can gather stones of resentment.

Or I can gather stones of remembrance.

I choose grace.

Not because bitterness wouldn't be understandable.

Because grace has given me life.

The older I become, the more convinced I am that we all become collectors.

Some of us collect evidence that the world cannot be trusted.

Some collect evidence that people will always disappoint us.

Some collect evidence that life has been unfair.

I understand that impulse.

I have lived it.

But today...

I choose to gather evidence of grace.

The stranger who became a friend.

The customer who returned.

The loaf that taught me patience.

The prayer that was answered.

The prayer that was lovingly withheld.

The ordinary morning that quietly reminded me God was still present.

Those are the stones I want to leave behind.

Not because they tell the whole story.

Because they tell the truest one.

I no longer believe my life is defined by the deepest wound I have experienced.

I believe it is being shaped by the grace I have chosen to receive.

That doesn't erase the wound.

It transforms what grows around it.

Perhaps that is what healing has always been.

Not forgetting.

Not denying.

Not pretending.

But choosing, one ordinary day at a time, to build a life where grace has the final word.

Warmly,

Kathy VandenBerghe
Art of The Crumb