Monday, January 26, 2015

The Frog in my Handbag aka Writing for Eternal Impact


It all started when the zip on my handbag broke. I left it in the lounge overnight, and was in traffic the next day when I discovered the stowaway. There's nothing quite like reaching for lipgloss and pulling out a frog. There may, or may not have been a bit of screaming involved. It took every scrap of self-control to keep driving until it was safe to pull over and evict my new friend. Ugh. On that same day, I nearly lost my purse because I couldn't zip my bag closed.

What does this have to do with writing, I hear you ask? Apart from the fact that all good prose involves frogs, one of the chief things that I pester Jesus for, is for Him to write Eternity through me.

I love to leave my reader chuckling, satisfied and keen to read more of my writing. I also want to have stirred a hunger for Eternity inside of them, a curiosity about this God who loves them.

One simple way of achieving this is to lace our writing with, what I call - Holy Spirit bombs. These are the revelations, the spiritual lessons that God gives you through living normal life that are profoundly simple, yet carry His anointing to shift the heart and spirit of your reader.

Jesus spoke to me about my bag and I wove it into my novel Finding Mia. When ones carries a load that you're not meant to (say, a cheating husband who leaves you), over time something breaks which allows things into your life that you would never normally allow in (being wooed by a smooth-talking kidnapper who is acutallly after your children). It also allows things to be stolen from you (common sense, in this case!) But when your life is hidden in Christ, He doesn't replace the zip on your life, He becomes the zip through which certain things are allowed and other things are simply not.

So as you go through your day and the odd bizarre thing happens to you, ask Jesus what it's all about. You can rest assured that most of what you go through is never meant for you personally at all, but is there to become grist for your mill and food for your reader.

Seen through His eyes, even a frog in a handbag becomes meaningful!

12 comments:

  1. Holy Spirit bombs...hmmmm....interesting. Thank you for this post.

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    1. I'm glad it struck a chord with you Bonnie. I often think my job as a Believing author is to create the delivery van for the one (or two) key things that the Holy Spirit has revealed.

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  2. Really thought provoking. I've always consciously found it hard to "write for Eternity" - I think because I write dark fantasy primarily, full of intrigue and the occasional dragon - but I definitely relate to the "Holy Spirit bombs". Death and the afterlife in my worlds may not be modeled entirely on Christian / Judeo-Christian belief, but the questions I seem to pose my readers do point them in a spiritual direction regardless. I think that, no matter what you write, Godly things unconsciously bleed through into your work. They have to, because if it's the core of your identity as a person it will also inform your work as a writer. It bothered me for a while that I couldn't seem to consciously "write God" into the stories I wanted to tell, but on discussion with a good Christian friend, I realized that said more about the way I boxed God up in my head than the way I wrote. Thanks for this. It's a fantastic analogy as well.

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    1. In Afrikaans there's a saying that goes 'wat die hart van vol is, loop die mond van oor" which essentially means what your heart is filled with, will run out of your mouth - or in our case, our fingers!

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  3. Enjoyed your post, Dianne. It's amazing how you can use those things that happen in stories. It sure helps them to ring true.

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    1. Thank you for your kind comment. I love sponging off real life :)

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  4. Great post, Diane. I believe that nothing happens for nothing. God is always working, even in the most mundane things. Romans 8:28 ... even frogs :)

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  5. I love bizarre things happening throughout my day. It's almost like GOD is trying to get our attention, but in a wonderful way. And you're very brave. My silliness would have caused me to shriek like a shark-attack if I found a frog in my purse.

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    1. Haha Jenn! I don't mind frogs, as long as they don't move. One little budge and the screaming starts :D I am right there with you re bizarre things - specially when they happen in threes!

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