I’ve wanted to comment on this post since it was written.  It was written a few days after this post and just slightly after this post.  Sometimes I read words through this medium that absolutely try to blow me away.  These words did.  Writing a short comment on your blog just didn’t seem ‘enough’.  I’m just glad that you are writing again.

1911 Red Studio by Henri Matisse

Considering; writing, pain, writing the pain and ‘how writing helps us see’,  I revisited something I was thinking about my own writing.  I once wondered if my writing sounds too optimistic, too positive and too ‘grateful’.  At times, I’ve wondered if my life is even believable.  More than once, I’ve written about  ‘audience‘  here and I’ve thought and wondered about the writer’s voice.  This is somehing that CAN be taught. Pain, loss, struggle and challenge are all floating about in my head all of the time and are beneath the surface of my writing, however optimistic. My words are arrows pointing me away from that pain and I am able to see blessings clearly.  To consider something you said…

“When I move, when I walk (because I can no longer run), when I chew the juiciest slice of steak or when I plunge head first into a crashing ocean wave, the pain tugs on the chain and snaps me back to the reality it has configured for me.  Pain grows jealous of any sensation that does not include it, and, like the guest at the party who must always be the center of attention, it screams and drowns out the more pleasant feelings as they politely try to redirect the conversation.”

Conversely, when the pain was so biting that I found myself sitting in front of the t.v. on the red couch more days than can ever be deemed reasonable,  when I tried to lose myself in the pain…not even really watching, but hearing the drone in the background of sitcom and reality t.v. and drama and Criminal Minds…immersing myself in the pain, shifting, sometimes crying…totally caving into its reminding, its nagging, its repeating…there in the midst of the darkness was this life force that shattered all of it.  Optimism, hope, gratitude and faith sucked me out of my warm seat…optimism caused me to pick up a book and read. Hope dragged me to the studio to paint.  Gratitude moved my pen.  Faith led me to pray for every need.  It all goes both ways, doesn’t it?  Better to have the ‘pain’ in the background screaming…than the other.  Sometimes we are fortunate enough to be able to choose one over the other.  I pray for those in our world who do not have the choice.