Tantum Gloriam Dei

I’ve just been rereading a favorite blog and hoping that the writer of it will post more someday, because, if brief, it is full of wisdom.

I wish I could write well. I can’t manage to express myself on paper in the way my thoughts go and in speaking I’m even worse. For a while, I thought that I had an unfixable problem, but I think I was wrong and I believe I’ve found what the hitch is. It’s that I need more words. I need un-everyday words (the dictionary kind) to describe subtle ideas and feelings; words that fit perfectly and run merrily together, the special kind that distinguish one writer from another, and a small supply of common ones won’t do. I think that if I want to cause my readers satisfaction, if I am to be a writer, I need to know how to write well (and by ‘write well’ I mean that I need to understand how a sentence goes together and how exactly punctuation works and, most importantly, I need more words).

Another cause for my problem is that I've not read deep enough or broad enough to be universally relevant, or, in fact, to be knowledgeable enough to write at all. How dare I make people listen to me, when I have nothing to say.

I feel that, at my age, the age of graduating from high-school, I know less than half of what I wish I’d learned when, as a child, I didn’t want to. I can name fifty books that I wish I’d read instead of Enid Blyton’s The Famous Five, or that unending series, The Boxcar Children. I know better now; I’ve learned my lesson. I hope I will not make the same mistake, if God gives me a second chance. I begin to understand, as I, and my life, develop into that of an adult, how children don’t (or can't) comprehend the value of time and the freedoms of childhood. They think it’ll always be the way it is. When I was very young, I thought that I could always read, if I want to, and then read anything at all, for that matter. Now I say to that child, no, you can’t! It’s impossible. We are mortal; we have time limits and expiry dates. Know, while you are young, that there are only so many years in your life to dedicate to learning, before it’s too late; before it’s over. If I’d known what my talents were and what I wanted to achieve as a child (if only I were wiser), then I’d have known how long it’d take for me to learn how to develop them and to achieve it and, if I were wiser, I’d have spent every precious minute in preparation, not to waste one, in order to fulfill my singular purpose as a wretched human being renewed by the blood of Christ.

 I suppose that childhood is God’s gift to us: a gift of time. And, I believe that I am meant to serve and exalt Him with my WHOLE life and with ALL my time and with EVERYTHING I own, using my gifts that He has given to me. He has given each of us specific gifts, and our job on this earth, I believe, is to find what that gift is that we have been given and to polish it as a diamond, in the time that He has lent us, so that we might offer the most possible glory to our Father who gives us grace, despite all our works being ugly in sin, because this is why we are here, right now. This is why God made us. He brought us into being in order to bring glory to Himself, because He is jealous and proud, in perfection. I can’t understand. I must only obey, because I deserve nothing. No, I deserve worse than nothing: I deserve death in eternity.

Now, look at what I’ve been given. I can’t give it back. I am in debt.

I hope you can bear with my rambling on in this less than comfortable way. I don’t know how to write plainly. If I’m right, a blog is like a journal, only it’s public (which is, again, less than comfortable), and a journal is for thoughts and thoughts, as I know them, are rarely polished and never perfect.

I’ll end now, for lack of anything good to say.

In Christ,

Taralyn Rose