Into the Fire

What comes to mind? A castle? A bunker? A fortress? A citadel?

Probably not the bastion of the mind. The place where we hide things we can't face. Or the place where we deposit painful experiences because we know the protection sustains those things not easily accessed.

Some are constructed hastily. In the moment. Others take years to build as we add onto the structure piece by hurtful piece. Containment. It's what we expect from our bastions. Protection from the life-thwarting daggers of certain episodes in life.

Who would've thought we'd need to erect a stronghold to keep us from ourselves? To deny us passage into the dark corridors we'd rather not admit exist.

Writing forces us to charge the barricade, to demand the drawbridge lowered, to storm into the chilling entance and stand transfixed by gaining entry. We look with wonder, our torches high and flaming, surveying what we've become and what we've failed to overcome. The story gushes forth like a frothy, foaming poison threatening to douse us in its liquid death, but since we seem planted – even paralyzed – by both its beauty and its horror, we stand still, and it comes right to us and infuses our nostrils with its hot danger but subsides before forcing us to breathe its annihilation.

We've trespassed our hidden limits. And survived. Recorded our innermost fears. Revealed our pungent emotions. Wondering who will be offended by our truths.

The bastions of writers: conquered. Again.

Father, we need you to reveal who we are at our core. You know us where we've hidden. We're desperate for you, Lord. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.