Editing the Story of Our Lives



Courtesy of Flickr

When I started writing I never would have thought I would have taken this journey so far. I began writing in junior high school for a homework assignment and then wrote my first novel (a historical) in high school.

Having written close to 300,000 words I realize the more I write, the more I realize I DON’T KNOW. True I don’t feel like I’m sliding three steps forward to race two steps back so much anymore, but it reminds me just how much writing parallels the Christian life.

No matter how many edits we put our fiction through, no matter how many times we read and re-read the work before it goes to an editor, then the copy editor and finally the printer there is going to be something somewhere we will not like.

Many authors don’t even like to read their work after it’s published because they will find a mistake.

How often do we avoid looking inward because we don’t want to know what is wrong? It’s true we will never reach perfection, we live in a sin cursed world and there will always be something tempting us, hurting, affecting our Christian walk.

What would happen if we spent more time avoiding what was wrong and decided to really dig into the problem? When I know something is wrong with my fiction I take a class or read a writing book to know how I can fix it.

Maybe when we have a problem within us we should start consulting the ultimate How-To book on life, the Bible.

It’s hard work to edit the problems out of our lives, but we aren’t asked to do it alone. We have God right there with us, guiding and directing us every step of the way. We just have to be WILLING to let Him instruct us, no matter how difficult it may seem.