Transparency and truth-seeking.

The writers I admire most are those who "lay it all out there" in a meaningful way. The things that have happened to us happened for a reason and there's no point in leaving them alone - they bring life to the words we put down. Anne Lamott describes the mess of life as fertile ground, where our creativity bursts forth, an idea I've visited previously. However, I don't think that just throwing all of my crap out here for anyone to see is what writing is about - it's where it starts; the crude oil that can be refined and turned into fuel.

If I'm working on my own story by writing parts of my life down, my perpetual hope is that I have something interesting to say or some fascinating pattern to pull out of these seemingly meaningless experiences. Also, I hope that pattern doesn't point to the near-certainty of a mental disorder. Most days it feels like that's the direction this is going.

I think that's a common hope, really: that our view of the circumstances of our lives is a clear one. That clarity is what we all seem to be seeking; we talk to others about "finding direction," or discuss our relationships with those around us, in a search to better understand. It's a measure of solidarity with each other, the reassurance that we're in this thing together.

There are prayers I find myself returning to on a regular basis. Many of them revolve around this same hope of increased clarity; for my marriage, my job, my music, my future. But what if I already know what I need to know? Maybe the waters can't become any clearer, since God is never done stirring them. My seeking of clarity can be an attempt to simply remove the risk from these areas of my life - a futile pursuit. If we knew exactly what to do, there would be no challenge or conflict to the decisions we make... making the outcomes of these decisions far less rewarding. Yet still I go for the safe route, all in the name of wanting to understand. In reality, real growth happens with the realization that that clarity may never come in this life, and we are simply supposed to trust in the One we know to be true.