Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Writing (01/11/07)
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TITLE: The Blessing | Previous Challenge Entry
By Tim Putnam
01/13/07 -
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The fingers moved. Words streamed onto a page. An admiring audience of a select few would praise and push the request: more.
More would come with little or no effort. No wrestling through sleepless nights. No epiphanies coaxing from the pillows at midnight. Issuing pleasing words at will. Prying into the readers emotions and passions and ripping into the very meat of their hearts.
But.
These words placed together consisted strictly of random imaginings to woo or sway the crowd.
Never from the heart of the writer. Or, so the writer wrote in obliviousness to the darkness the imagination issued forth.
A desire grew to open the heart of the writer. A no longer silent yearning to draw forth stories from that opened the a foreboding pit of memories.
The blade of one story sliced through pretense.
Memories that had been forgotten now came into the open. The storyteller looked inside.
The ink flowed no longer.
As drydocked vessels seek to leave a safe harbor, the writer’s words echoed of untold stories. Screaming from the darkness the writer failed them. Silenced them. Left them cold for dark years imprisoned in the void of unpublished. Unwritten. Untold. Ignored.
Fear lay at the doorstep to the heart. Dark terror tucked away waiting, holding captive the stories and joy that once drove the writer. That once brought forward the writing.
No being of this earth could get me in there pledged the writer. I will seal it and look no longer.
Diminish became attractive.
Obscurity grew into an obsession.
The writer retreated into corporate and empty words. A small audience gave praise came the writer’s perception of unworthy writing.
The writer was caught unaware. That even without the strength to venture forward, the gift remained. The blessing never passed, rather it grew and waited.
Each issue of praise, each unworthy paragraph and the writer yearned to embark on the journey. Every yearning brought forth a cold chill of what waited. Each cold chill had with it greater fear. Fear gave way to hopelessness. Hopelessness became a blessing. It brought surrender.
The guide arrived. The guide revealed the light. The light took the hand of the writer and stepped towards the stoop of the writer’s personal abyss.
Fear didn’t melt away. It never left nor forsook the writer. It simply became irrelevant in the light.
The light gave the strength to face the heart, face the failure, face the disappointment.
The darkness ebbed away as the light guided inward. The writer stumbled. And again. The light lovingly reached down. The light restored the writer.
Write. It commanded. Do not forsake the gift. Do not forget all the darkness revealed.
The writer obeyed.
The gift became acquainted with blessing. Praise issued from the writer’s fingers. Praise to the God in Heaven that promised never to leave, never to forsake and gave the courage screamed the writer.
As the darkness parted. As the worst revealed itself to the writer, the writer found something unexpected.
Instead of despair there was joy; success not failure.
The gift that waited patiently was reclaimed.
Though never again did it come easy. The gift revealed through the blessing always brought greater joy than any human praise could.
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