Penning Our Pain

“In art, either as creators or as participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten, and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, we who are children of God by adoption and grace.” Madeleine L’Engle     

Writing is therapy. Free and effective therapy. Whether we privately journal our way through life, or publicly rant about the political climate on a blog, writing is a way to process our internal chaos. I like the above quote from M’LE because it acknowledges that our omnipotent, good God allows us to experience and endure pain.

In America’s watered down version of Christianity, it’s an unpopular idea that bad things will happen to good people. And there’s no way that a good God would ordain such events, would he? But that pop-theology flies in the face of scripture. If you want just a wee bit of back up for that, check out the book of Job. Notice that God calls Job a righteous man . . . and then points him out to Satan, giving the fallen angel permission to wreak havoc on Job’s life as a test. Yeah . . . not exactly the prosperity gospel, is it?

So how does writing—and other forms of art—help us work through the pain that promises to make house calls . . . like the uninvited, whisker-faced aunt who stops by to slather a kiss on your face and borrow your restroom because she can’t make it home. Life sometimes stops to take a dump on you, doesn’t it? (I hate that expression, but my husband will be proud). And I’m talking circumstances that are beyond  impossible to “make lemonade” from because life, after all, handed you something a lot worse than lemons.

I’ll confess that I’ve never been one to keep a journal. I’ve tried and failed. The proof lies in the dozen or so dusty journals that burrow by my bed, gifts from well-meaning friends.  (I can’t throw them away because I always give journaling a shot—therefore each pretty little book has a few weeks worth of personal thoughts I might one day want to revisit).

I’m better at epiphanies in which a long string of circumstances come together and make sense in a light-bulb sort of moment. For instance, when my autistic son prepared to graduate high school, God graciously revealed the victories over the many, exhausting battles we had fought for most of his life. I had to sit down and process my emotions, and connect all the dots, right then and there. It was a very therapeutic exercise and when I get discouraged in the fray, I’ll go back and read the post to refresh my faith and courage.  If you are interested, you can read about it here.

While reading passages from Walking on Water to prepare for today’s blog, I received a similar post from the blog “Wordserve Water Cooler.” Author Karen Jordan wrote a thoughtful piece entitled “Frozen in Time: Writing and Healing.” She began her post with a poignant quote: “Healing … is change from a singular self, frozen in time by a moment of unspeakable experience, to a more fluid, more narratively able, more socially integrated self.” (Writing and Healing, Charles Anderson & Marian M. MacCurdy)

There’s a lot we could unpack in that sentence but it made me think of how the artistic process works in reverse. When we traverse the path of our pain writing our story in the pages of a book—or perhaps chisel it out of marble—we have now encapsulated that pain in that work of art. It becomes a personification of that thing, whatever it was, that broke our heart or left us bleeding, and allows others to take a look and understand, with a glance or a read, where we’ve been. Often it touches a similar experience in the onlooker, whispering that they’re not alone in their broken world.

If anything, our work helps us feel understood by others, even as the creative process helps us understand ourselves. What a joy and a victory that is! What a wonderful step towards freedom that can be affected from both sides of the creative process. Even if what we write is an entirely private matter, the exercise of investing ourselves in our craft still does its job: framing things with perspective and extending hope.

Of course, our art isn’t always about expressing the pain in our lives. Though that’s what I wanted to focus on here, there are certainly wonderful and good reasons to create! I hope each of us will find life filled with many lovely things that far outnumber the gut-wrenching moments.  As artists, we often don’t need any good reason to do what we love, do we? There’s joy in the affair of letting go and musing freely.

What motivates you the most? Pleasure or pain? I’d love to hear how you have found solace in your work.