When God Keeps Giving You Pages

There were projects already in motion. Decisions about going back to school. Work. Family. Plans for the future. And then my sister became ill. Suddenly, the things I thought required my attention became very small compared to the thing standing directly in front of me.

There were hospitals and doctors. Questions without easy answers. Children who needed reassurance. A family trying to understand an illness we thought we understood until we were standing inside of it. There was advocacy. There was exhaustion. There was prayer. So much prayer. And there were moments when I had absolutely nothing left to give.

The journal grew quiet. But strangely, the writing did not. If anything, the stories kept coming. I have been thinking about that lately. There have been seasons in my life when I begged God for direction. I wanted some unmistakable sign pointing toward what I was supposed to do with all the pieces of my life. I think I expected purpose to arrive like thunder. Instead, mine seems to keep arriving as pages.

On September 1, my second poetry collection, The Quiet Becoming, will be released into the world. There is something almost sacred about saying that. My first book, Scar Tissue & Stardust, was born from survival. It held the wounds, the scars, the things I had lived through and somehow survived. The Quiet Becoming came afterward. It is softer. It is the poetry of what happens when survival is no longer the only thing occupying the room. It is about peace, healthy love, faith, acceptance, home, and the strange realization that healing doesn't always announce itself.

Sometimes you simply look around one day and realize you are no longer who you used to be. I thought perhaps that would quiet the need to write for a while. God apparently had other plans. Because there is another book growing now. This one is different. Poetry is still there because poetry will probably always be the language my heart speaks first. But this book is asking for stories too. Longer reflections. Pieces of life placed beside poetry in a way that lets one illuminate the other.

And then there is Mesquite Creek. A novel.

Even writing those words makes me smile a little because there was a time when I would have told you I was a poet, not a novelist. Apparently, God does not seem particularly interested in the boxes I put around myself. The story keeps unfolding. Characters keep becoming real. A place that once existed only somewhere in my imagination has begun developing roads and histories and secrets of its own. And I want to follow it wherever it goes.

But perhaps the project weighing most heavily on my heart right now is one I never would have chosen the circumstances to write.

Walking Together: A Family Guide to Understanding, Supporting, and Navigating Bipolar Disorder.

That book came from somewhere entirely different. It came from hospital rooms. From questions. From watching someone I love to become someone I sometimes could not recognize. From trying to understand mania and psychosis and medication and recovery. From learning the difference between supporting someone and trying to save them. From watching a family love someone fiercely while also being frightened, confused, exhausted, hopeful, angry, grieving, and grateful—sometimes all in the same day.

I wish our family had never needed some of the lessons I am putting into those pages. But we did. And other families will too. Maybe that is part of what I've been learning about calling. Sometimes God gives us something because we are good at it. Sometimes He gives us something because we survived it. Sometimes He places us in rooms we never wanted to enter and later shows us that what we learned there can become a lantern for somebody still standing in the dark.

I don't believe everything painful happens because God wanted it to happen.

I do believe He is extraordinarily good at refusing to waste what pain leaves behind.

That distinction matters to me. And lately, I have found myself looking at all these projects and wondering how one person is supposed to carry so many stories at once. Poetry. A novel. A family guide. Another collection slowly taking shape. School. Work. Family. Life.

My first instinct is the one I have always had: Figure it out. Make a plan. Work harder. Find more hours. Carry it. But perhaps this season is asking something different of me. Perhaps I don't need to know how all of it gets finished. Perhaps I only need to know what I am being asked to do next. One page. One poem. One chapter. One class.

One prayer.

One faithful yes at a time.

I have spent much of my life asking God to show me my purpose as though there would eventually be one great answer. I'm beginning to wonder if purpose is less like receiving a map and more like following breadcrumbs. A word placed on your heart. Then another. A door. A person. An experience. A story you cannot stop thinking about. A quiet pull toward something you don't completely understand yet. And then the choice to follow.

Maybe faith isn't knowing where the road ends.

Maybe faith is trusting the One who keeps asking you to walk it.

I don't know what all of these books will become. I don't know how many people will read them. I don't know whether Mesquite Creek will someday sit on someone's nightstand or whether Walking Together will find its way into the hands of a frightened sister, husband, mother, daughter, or friend sitting in a hospital waiting room searching for answers. I hope they do. But I am learning that outcome cannot be the reason I write them.

Obedience has to come before outcome.

If God put the story on my heart, my responsibility is to honor it. To write it carefully. To tell the truth. To keep learning. To remain humble enough to change what I get wrong. And to trust that the people who need the words will find them when they are meant to.

Maybe that is why the journal needed to be quiet for a little while. I thought I wasn't writing here because life had gotten in the way. Now I wonder if life was giving me something new to write about. Because somewhere between July 18 and today, I remembered something. I am writing about becoming anymore. I am living it. And apparently, God still has pages for me. So, I will keep turning them. One faithful yes at a time.

— Jennifer Rene Wallace