Cheap Medicine

If you're just joining the party, I'd recommend reading my first post as a primer, which includes a few disclaimers and housekeeping items of note.

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My writing career started inauspiciously, which is to say it didn't start well. The essay was littered with misspellings, run-on sentences, a complete lack of punctuation, and very poor character and plot development. 

And when I say 'sentences,' I really should say 'sentence' because it consisted of just that - one single sentence.

At the ripe old age of seven, with pencil and paper in hand, I crafted my first paper with zeal:

"My mom likes to sowe and her name is Nancy and she likes to sleep a lot" 

My apologies to my mother for the aforementioned poor character development, which effectively portrayed you as a couch potato (apart from the occasional sowing/sewing). You were, in fact, anything but a couch potato because you were working like a dog, pulling down night shifts, working for the local newspaper. Which, by extension, meant you were sleeping during the day. But as a seven-year-old budding writer, who can afford to dedicate time and space to explaining such trivialities? So much pencil lead, so few lines. Something had to get sacrificed. Apparently I was learning to "kill my darlings" well before my time, even if that meant I killed all the darlings. 

Like I said, my writing career had an inauspicious start.

Despite such a start, however, I'd like to believe I've come along way since the days of yore. And regardless of said start, that small sun-bleached piece of paper still reflects the heartbeat of my life:

Words.

I started my first journal when I was in sixth grade. I still have it, in all its Lisa Frank and N*SYNC-loving glory. And I have every journal since then, volumes of them, chronicling 27 years of my life. At any given point, I'm likely mentally stewing on what to write about next. Musicians might compose entire songs in their heads, hearing melodies and harmonies, lyrics and lines. As a writer, I see words and phrases, trying to think through how to string them together in a way that is cohesive, powerful, and effective, even if those words never see the light of day.

In the coming months, I will take a lot of really expensive medicine.

But words? That's the real medicine, the good stuff with no side effects.

Those are what will actually keep me alive.

Ann Voskamp said in her book One Thousand Gifts, speaking of writing, "Because the picking up of a pen isn't painful and ink can be cheap medicine. And I just might live." 

The picking up of a pen (to be precise, black Pilot G2 premium gel roller pens, either 0.38 or 0.5 fine point) - or a pencil or a computer keyboard - isn't painful for me and ink is cheap medicine. 

That's a bottle of pills I'll gladly swallow any day.

And I just might live.

But here's the tricky part as a writer, especially if you bend more toward the reflective side like I do - you can write something, thinking it's for someone else, for some other intended audience, only to discover you yourself were the intended audience.

Two weeks before the bottom dropped out of my life, I submitted an article for consideration to Gospel-Centered Discipleship, a site I've written for a handful of times over the last 7-ish years. I had been mentally mulling over the piece for well over a year, with a sentence here and there taking shape, but the entire piece never seemed to get traction in my head. As a general rule of thumb, I have learned to live by the notion that the art of writing is largely the art of waiting. I've learned not to rush pieces. I can't crowd the words, otherwise it will inevitably come across to the reader. If it doesn't come together first in my head with any sort of cohesion, it will likely never make it to paper. 

But despite this piece rolling around in my head for such a considerable length of time and never really coming together, I couldn't shake it loose either. It's like I was haunted by it. I finally sat down in early January and started putting all the puzzle pieces together, deciding that waiting was actually working against me in this instance. 

I submitted the draft on January 20, two weeks before my diagnosis. The editor responded a few days later, saying, "Love it, let's publish, but I want to hold it until Easter." 

Fine by me, I said. 

That piece was released today.

And in light of my circumstances, I now read the words I wrote back then differently. 

I wrote of what it means to live a life of paradox, to live a life that reflects Christ. I wrote of what it means to be a kind of people who, when faced with opposition or hardship, set our faces like flint, all while not allowing our hearts to turn to stone, drawing on verses from Isaiah 50 and Ezekiel 37. 

My editor might have said we were holding the piece because of Easter. 

But I suspect if we pulled back the curtains of heaven, we would find that's not the real reason.

God, in his sovereignty, held this piece until now, as he knew I would need a dose of my own words. 

You might read the article and it might be of value to you (I hope that it is, and I hope that you do, in fact, share it with others), but you weren't the intended audience, not like I thought.

I was the intended audience. 

It turns out the past me was writing a letter to the future me.

The past me was writing to the future me, the me that would be walking around in this world with a cancer diagnosis that I didn't have when I first penned those words.

The past me was offering up words of wisdom to the future me.

The past me was offering up a bottle of cheap medicine to the future me.

I penned words I didn't know I would need.

I don’t want what I'm experiencing - all this upheaval and uncertainty and fear - to harden me, to turn my heart to stone, to embitter me. It would be so easy to grow hard in the face of suffering, to become calloused. I need the words I wrote back then to remind me of that now. I want to tell a better story instead, one that is willing to live within the tension of paradox. 

Donald Miller, in his book A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, wrote, 

We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn’t mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose.  It’s a good calling, then, to speak a better story.  How brightly a better story shines.  How easily the world looks to it in wonder.  How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.

The world is telling a lot of bad stories, teaching us that life doesn't mean anything. 

I want to speak a better story.

I want to speak a better story of a girl who set her face like flint, but did not set her heart like stone.

I want to speak a better story that shines brightly and is worth repeating.

And I will be able to do that only through the help of the Sovereign Lord - and cheap medicine. 

By faith, I'm believing that so long as God gives me breath, then he will also give me words. 

And I pray that will be the medicine, cheap as it may be, that keeps me alive - alive with a face like flint, but not a heart like stone.

If you know someone who could use some cheap medicine, feel free to send this post (or any post, for that matter) or the article to them. You can either link directly, or you can visit GCD's social media platforms on Facebook, Instagram, or X/Twitter, and re-share from the respective post.

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Functional updates:

I'll try to carve out space in each post to provide updates on where I am in the process. So, if you're just here for the nuts and bolts, in the future you can slide straight here to the bottom and skip my idle wanderings above.

The next few weeks between now and surgery are feeling a bit hectic and overwhelming at times, trying to get in final pre-op appointments, getting things in order for work, making the rounds with family and friends, and just dealing with the every day administrative necessities of life, all while I physically don't always feel great (or motivated). It's been a matter of taking things one at a time and being patient with my mind and body.

But the good news is, Flash held it together long enough for me to make it to Cincinnati to see Ben Rector and Cody Fry perform with the Cincinnati Pops earlier this week. My friend Jill and I are fans of both Ben and Cody - this was my eighth time seeing Ben in concert and Jill's seventh. And we even made his video on social media, given that we had front-row seats! (Lower right corner as the video pans, both of us unintentionally wearing all black.) I may or may not have cried when they performed this song. "Maybe the fear just means that I'm alive..." Gah. Just such brilliant musicians.

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