A Handful of Coins

Writing is fickle. Sometimes, it comes so easily that I’m reminded of the old adage about authors finding their characters rather than inventing them. It can seem nothing more than blowing dust off an old book, the neat columns of paragraphs elegantly supporting your thoughts. You almost can’t take credit for this kind of writing because it was just there all along, waiting to be found. But then there are the times when your head becomes a cage and your thoughts will not find their way out. They dissolve before they’ve found their way to the page, like snow melting before it hits the ground. You can run through fields, you can run your fingers through your hair, but you can’t seem to stop your words from running through your fingers.

It’s been called “writer’s block,” which sounds like some kind of scientific model, or molecule describing the atomic principles of a given author: Just as DNA is the building block of life, the written word is the writer’s block. The only word that truly does the symptom justice is despair. It’s a despair so deep that it rarely finds expression. How could it? This despair arose because of a lack of expression in the first place. Because it can’t adequately give voice to its complaints, this despair grows perpetually, and the greater it becomes, the less likely it will ever be spoken and thus subdued. I imagine it something like an intricate toy with a precise slot through which a particular object with a particular shape can fit, say a star, a circle, or a tree. But nothing but that star will do, when it comes to the star-shaped slot, and this, I think, is what we call writer’s block; a symptom characterized by a chronic inability to pair a thought with a collection of adequate wording.

There are times when talking to God feels like this. I keep searching for the proper phrasing, an adequate group of words, a soundbite, something I heard a pastor say in a prayer, anything, until I’m left pulling my hair and cursing. I want nothing more than to drop the formality, to simply breath my sorrows, hopes and dreams to Him. But I find myself oddly stifled. I feel like I’ve used up all my songs, words and curses. All of them feel as used and worn as the coins that litter my pockets, and freckle public floors. I fear that I can’t give what’s dead or expired to a God who could invent a new word at the drop of a hat, sing a song to end all songs, and share a hope that would tear all life from my lungs.

I would do well to remember that God is not looking for me to impress Him. He’s not my audience, He’s my eternal Father. Though my words are nothing more than copper coins, they are all I have to give, and as most of us were reminded this past Thursday, sometimes there’s no greater blessing than to be told, “Thank you.”

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