God said, "Write!"

I went to a retreat this past weekend with a local church, and it was pretty great. You know how things go on these retreats...lots of crazy people, lots of good food, lack of sleep, and a lot of quality time with Jesus.One part of the retreat that was truly encouraging for me was the Saturday night gathering because toward the end Pastor Jordan got up front to share something he felt God had been putting on his heart that day. (I always love it when people get up to do this and look slightly unsure of their own sanity.) The first thing he said was, "I feel like God is telling me that there are authors in this community."I don't know what I was expecting him to say, but I know I wasn't expecting him to say something that hit me directly in my heart. See, at the beginning of the year, I knew one of my New Year's goals should be to write more frequently and with purpose. I did alright with that for a few weeks then life got kind of crazy, and I stopped being as intentional about finding time to write something.Do you ever know without a doubt you are supposed to be doing something specific, but you just don't want to put the time and effort into it for some reason? If so, then you know exactly how I've been feeling the last few weeks. I knew I should be writing, not because it was a New Year's goal but because I knew God wanted me to do it. However, knowing God wanted me to didn't make it any easier to sit myself down and do it.Saturday night though, it was like God said, "Stop ignoring my instructions!" and proceeded to smack me over the head with it so I can't ignore it anymore. That may be extremely poor theology, but the point is, God got my attention again.So I spent some time Sunday and a few hours yesterday simply journaling about my feelings on my life and what God is doing in it. Obviously, I'm not going to post all of that here, but writing it down in my journal is generally the first step to writing a blog entry about something. Also, a lot of my 'creative' writing is in no way ready for public viewing, so it might be a while before it ever sees the light of a computer screen.I think the important thing is that God convinced me to keep writing, even though it won't always be perfect. Even if I'm the only one who ever reads it, it's best way for me to process (and sometimes share) my thoughts and the things He is teaching me.