Writing Our Story

Alleluia! We don't have to be right! We do have to love, to be vulnerable, to accept joy and pain, to grow through them.

Was it predetermined that Milton go blind in order to write Paradise Lost? That Beethoven go deaf to write the Ninth Symphony? That these artists grew through affliction is undeniable, but that this affliction was planned? No! Everything in me rebels. I cannot live in a world where everything is predetermined, an ant world in which there is no element of choice. I do believe that we all have a share in the writing of our own story. We do make a decision at the crossroads. Milton could have retreated into passive blindness and self-pity instead of trying the patience of his three dutiful daughters and any visiting friend by insisting that they write down what he dictated. Beethoven could have remained in the gloom of silence instead of forging the glorious sounds which he could never hear except in his artist's imagination.

Sometimes the very impetus of overcoming obstacles results in a surge of creativity.

It is in our responses that we are given the gift of helping God write our story.

~Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water, pp 232-233