Many of my
friends have a word of the year. Whether their year goes from January through
December or from their birthday to their next birthday, they listen for a word
that calls them to something more. I have never had a word for my year, but a
few months ago a word came to me that I know is mine until I’m done with it.
That might be next week or more likely it will be months or possibly years from
now. The word is, “Risk.”
For a long
time I was extremely conscientious, guilt-ridden, emotionally-suppressed,
self-controlled (my mother told me as a child that I was the most
self-controlled person she knew)… You get the picture. Through psychotherapy
and my own journey into the field of psychotherapy, but mostly God’s grace, I
am freer of the idolatry and trap that many of those things can be, and have
been, for me. And yet, to choose to Risk continues to be difficult. Risk seems
foolish, impulsive, exposed, risky (risk seems risky, right?). And yet, if I am
a person under grace, if I am a person of faith, then risk is inevitable. Faith
is all about Risk – if we must trust what we cannot see, at many times cannot
feel – then it is incredibly Risky. Some might even call it foolish.
One of my
intentional and terrifying acts of Risk that I am choosing to take is to
publish a novel; a romance novel, no less. Sure, I’d like to publish something
profound and deep, a classic. But that is a gift bestowed on few and I
recognize it is unlikely I am one of them. Don’t get me wrong, innumerable
gifts, many of great significance have been bestowed on me, but I do not know
writing a profound literary piece will be one of them.
It is always
risky to expose oneself and one’s work to the world. But as my dear friend,
Robin, reminded me, my work is now “other” than me. It is partially me, but it
is also other. Many things happened in this novel and in the process of writing
it that have nothing to do with me. I am merely a conduit in those best
moments. A conduit for something larger, something grander, and more beautiful
than anything I could ever scrawl.
By the time
it is published, it will have been two years in the writing. And the process of
writing has been so profoundly beautiful, freeing, and risky for me all at the
same time.
So, lift
your glasses to Risk, my friends. Lift your glasses to leaping over the cliff
of publishing.
