I’m happy to have Addie over at the blog, and I know you’ll enjoy this, my friends! Thanks, Addie. To read the other articles in this Series by some amazing people, click here.
Addie Zierman (@addiezierman) is a writer, mom, and Diet Coke enthusiast. She blogs twice a week at How to Talk Evangelical, where she’s working to redefine faith one cliche at a time.
The Ways Blogging is Healing Me
Addie Zierman
In the spring of 2011, I hauled my 8-month-pregnant body to the podium at Hamline University to give my graduate reading. The baby’s feet were jammed up in my ribcage, and my lungs had so little space left for expanding that I had to pause after every couple of sentences to catch my breath.
The manuscript that I read from that night was my memoir, How to Talk Evangelical. I’d started my MFA program as a young, evangelical wife, freshly back from a year of teaching in China. I didn’t know that I was already up to my ankles in the slow-sinking sand of Depression. I didn’t see that wild, angry crisis of faith coming. I smacked into it at full speed.
My manuscript is a reflection of a five-year journey away from and back toward God. I was writing into the anger, into the pain. I was digging through the past, pulling sharp shards of memories out of my heart and into the light.
It was messy and raw and a little volatile, and when I was done, I felt very weak – like someone who has just gotten better from a long bout with a terrible flu and is maybe ready to try eating…but probably just half a piece toast.
One year later, when my agent told me that I needed to start a blog, I felt defeated before I even started. I thought, I am not a blogger. I thought, I have two really little kids and NO TIME EVER.
I thought that “platform” was about numbers and followers and selling a book. But it turned out to be something entirely different.
And here it is: I’d spent five years ripping up the rotten, mildewed boards of my warped view of God. A theology that could not sustain the weight of my pain.
But as I began writing my blog, I realized that we were not so much building a platform for a book as a new platform of faith. A sturdier foundation. Something I could stand on; something that could hold me up.
In keeping with the theme of my book, I began to write, twice a week, about evangelical terms. Cliches. Things like Jesus freak and on fire and feeling God’s presence. I wrote to shine a light on the ways we miss it in the evangelical culture, but instead, I found the light turned in on my own dark places. My own failings and doubts. My own unhealed pain.
The discipline of putting something out there twice a week, every week, feels like a kind of faith in itself. These days, the old ways of “quiet time” feel foreign and forced, but the blog has given me an unexpected way back in.
Term by term, day by day, I get up and look at the pond while the sun rises. I write a sentence. Erase it. Write two. Erase. Painstakingly, word by word, God is giving me new language, a new way to talk about longing and struggle and doubt. A new way of seeing him.
Where I’ve struggled to be honest about my pain in church and small groups and the usual places where Christians gather, I am finding a new place in the borderless internet. I am finding voices who echo back my heart, and reading them every day is like eating good, hearty bread.
I write, and it feels holy. I read, and it feels like community. And yes, there are days when it’s hard. When my heart gets bogged down with numbers and stats and rejection and the who-said-what of it all…
But most days, it feels like we are all building it together. Like we’re pounding it all out, nail by nail, board by board, with a carpenter from Nazareth. Like every day, I am finding my footing a little bit more.
Lovely post as always Addie. You really nailed the point that writing is as much for ourselves as it is for others. We gain such clarity from writing! Thanks for modeling what you write about so wonderfully.
I’m so glad writing online has brought you this gift. What you put out there is certainly a gift to me, and to others. I also find that this routine of posting becomes a sort of spiritual discipline for me. It is unexpected and beautiful.
Beautiful, Addie – this has been my experience as well.
This is rich. Your words are a very timely gift.
Addie,
I know at times the Carpenter has us pull out the nails we have pounded in and pull up the board and start over again to our disheartenment. It often feels like we are going backwards when we pull those nails out and remove the board. Sometimes we realize “oh that is what I had wrong” and know we really are moving forward but at times we may not understand what is going on. We just have to trust the Master Carpenter.
Yes, we are building it together. So grateful for your voice, friend.
Loved hearing about your process & this journey, Addie. So thankful for your story.
As someone who just recently started a blog because I was so tired of writing posts in my head, this really spoke to me. I write because I need to hear myself think out loud and because I need to see on “paper” (or screen, as it were) the hand of God in my life. It’s interesting because I think I’ve discovered what so many people find about their own life–there’s a story here, even if to me it just seems like regular normal life. I’ve enjoyed discovering your writing and am looking forward to the book whenever it comes. Until then, thanks for your platform!
I can really relate to this, Addie. The reason I started blogging four years ago (because an editor who was interested in my book proposal told me I had to first go out and build a platform) is not the reason I continue blogging today. Now I blog for the discipline, the community, and for this process: “Painstakingly, word by word, God is giving me new language…” Maybe it will all eventually add up to a platform that supports a book I publish, and maybe not, but it still has value in and of itself. I’m so glad you’re realizing that value, too, and that you’re a part of my blogging community!
You have a beautiful heart. You could easily have chosen bitterness, but something in you was stronger than that and I am grateful for your inspiration each time I read your blog Addie. Thank you.
Susie
http://www.recoveringchurchlady.com/
Oh, I just loved this. Thank you Addie!
Thank you, Addie! Very enriching to share common ground with a different faith practice.
Thanks Amy! And thanks for the link from your blog! Kind.
Thanks Susie. There was bitterness and cynicism for a while. But that gets so exhausting. So glad God brought me to a place beyond it.
Agreed. Thankful for you lady!
Thanks J.R. Yes, there is story and meaning in all the ordinary moments. So glad you decided to share yours.
Thanks so much Gillian. :)
Yes. A good metaphor.
Yes, I did not anticipate it becoming such a spiritual discipline either. It’s “journaling” for the new generation! Ha!
I too have found depression and the healing process a way towards a deeper relationship with God. It’s not a simple thing, not something one will expect or predict. I was so frustrated so many times, so discontent, so unhappy with myself. It has taken a lot of work, a lot of inner work, a lot of patience from those around me (and a lot of misunderstandings from others around me). While my journey continues to only go deeper, here is a bit of what I have gone through: http://sistersunderthetrees.com/2012/03/05/taking-a-huge-leap/
You’ve said this so much better than I can…yes. It’s hard to explain to folks how very healing blogging has been for me.
Thank you for your beautifully written blogs. Your work encourages me to continue with my blog. it is at unbridledlove.org. Wood appreciate your comments.
Thanks Bill. I checked your site. I think you have some great stuff. Your posts run a bit long and don’t contain photos. Those things could improve it in my opinion, since you asked. :)
-Lisa