How many times in my life have my words stop flowing because she … ? She has always been another writer, someone who communicates best in written form and shares her thoughts with those around her. She has been someone different time and time again.
When I first sat down to share this, I pictured many of the different women she has been. I don’t consider myself a very competitive person, but the first few women I thought of, something in life made me feel like I was in competition with those particular women. It took a lot of healing and help to come to realize that she wasn’t my competition and while there was outside influence and pressure to see her as competition, the biggest problem was the way I was looking at things.
Yet, as the faces slid through my mind and I tried to decide where to start, I realized that some of the women were never women I felt like I was in competition with. I don’t really view life that way anyway – I think it’s very much a team event and we sharpen and motivate and encourage one another onward.
So if some of the women stirred up unusual feelings of competition but some of them didn’t, then what was the common thread? And why did she make it to where I couldn’t write?
Maybe I felt less than when I compared myself to her.
Or maybe I felt ashamed. Or like she wrote better.
What really hit me was when I realized I was afraid to let them see where I was vulnerable. I can’t come here to this space and lie. It’s not what God called me to do. I can’t come here and make up someone I’m not or write a life I’m not living. Sometimes this is raw, sometimes gritty, but always open, honest, authentic.
And sometimes, when I think of her winding up in this space reading it, I think she might find my weak points. Maybe, she’ll use my vulnerability against me.
She has many faces, she has come into my life in different roles, and she is honestly just a messed up way the enemy of God tries to put a stop to me writing. Some false sense of self-protection or bravado. Hiding in fear of what exactly? I don’t know anymore.
Tonight I ask God to teach me to persevere and pen my words despite what road blocks and writers block the enemy tries to hurl at me.
Until next time,
Regina Walker 