Unity in Diversity: Overcoming Insecurity as a Writer

I got a heartwarming email from an amazingly talented writer and friend in South Africa, Ashleigh Davids. It was encouraging, uplifting, and inspiring. I hope you are as motivated as I was after reading it.

It reads as follows:

Dear friend,

You may not share my battle and this may not be new revelation to you. That's fine. But perhaps this will serve as a reminder or encourage you or someone that YOU know who shares our common gift.

I was reading a blog by my friend, Gabrielle Gibson today. http://qu3eng.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/broken-english.html

Her piece on Broken English (which I'm sure you'll love) is so beautiful. I found myself fist pumping and letting out OOHS and AAHS while reading it and later sharing it on my social media pages.

As a friend, I was proud and impressed by her- and as a writer, I was madly excited and inspired to do better.

Prior to that, I was also listening to a spoken word piece by Itohan Osaigbovo - which touched on a topic that had my thoughts reeling and coaxed me into challenging myself as an individual after God's heart.

I'm sure you have had a similar experience.

Often, the people around us will inspire us with the gift and purpose they have been blessed with, whether it be through their creativity, skill, natural talent, wisdom, knowledge or execution and other spiritual attributes and fruits. Can you believe God's creation??? My mind is blown sometimes. He's amazing!

Unfortunately, more than or instead of praising God for His goodness and the pouring out of His spirit on creation which allows all this splendour to spring forth or simply enjoying and learning from the people around us - we covet what others have or feel insecure about we have and do not have.

I have been guilty of this. I know my skill, my talent, my gift and my purpose - I know my God. Still, I have made comparisons, and felt inferior because certain criteria made it seem like someone else was a better writer and servant than I am or ever will be.

I'm sure you can identify a handful of people in your life who are incredibly good at what they do (writing). And if you line them up in your mind, I can also assure you that none of them are identical but that each one is set apart for His good works.

Dying to my insecurities is a daily action. And part of doing so is acknowledging that I have held envy, low-self esteem, a warped sense of giftings and what I am able to do in this life at my bosom. I have nursed these babes and enabled them, feeding their growth and development in my life. Part of breaking this cycle, is celebrating you and sharing my story, and perhaps encouraging you to do the same for yourself or someone else.

Whether you  battle fears that you are not enough of a theologian, comedian,  scholar of literature and academic genius,  an expert on Christian rhetoric or an entertainer who bears the mark of a skilled artisan or simply feel  like you are not doing God or your faith justice - God sees you, and I have compassion for your journey.

I am reminded today that there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit, differences in ministries but the same Lord, diversities in activities, but the same God who works in all. The manifestation of the Spirit has been given to each one of us for the profit of all. The 12th Chapter of 1 Corinthians speaks about this unity in diversity. At some point we were all Gentiles, carried away to the dumb idols (insecurities) we served, however we were led. And by the grace of God, we can be delivered from that ignorance. God has set us, members of the body, just as He pleased.

If you're troubled by comparisons, be encouraged.

'If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling?' 1 Corinthians12:17

'And if they were all one member, where would the body be?' 1 Corinthians 12:19

If you've been liberated from this - HALLELUJAH! If you're healing, PRAISE GOD! If you haven't had this issue, THANK JESUS, and if you are stronger in this area, pray for and assist the weak. If you're starting your journey, the Lord is at hand and mighty to save.

I would think God promotes diversity, let us celebrate it too.

I thank God for your gift, and pray that the greatest of all gifts, being the Love which is God - will continue to make room for you.


Have a wonderful day!

Regards

INFO ABOUT ASHLEIGH:

Ashleigh Davids (21) is located in Cape Town, South Africa. As a writer and storyteller, she hopes to write what He likes, as aptly stated in the tag line of her personal blog, www.ashleighdavids.com. Her journey is full of pot holes, and experience has proven that short cuts don't work out that well. She's chosen the scenic route - life with a God who never fails. Flat tires are not rare, and we all know that gas does not come cheaply. She hopes to always possess enough to give to others and her road trip is accompanied by floetry, teaching and an interest in editorial work for magazines. 

She's terribly gifted with a heart after God's. Make sure you check out her blog!

Broken English

The following is a freewrite that started as a status:

In discussing whether or not I should use "who's" or "whose" with a friend, I was reminded that English is one of the most difficult languages to exist. Many people have the tendency to think other languages are hard because for many of us, English was our first language, or a language spoken growing up. 

 The reality is that the pronunciations, spelling, and grammatical rules are complex and inconsistent. In 23 years of learning English, I still feel like we're just acquaintances some days. I don't know her as well as I thought I did.

English sometimes feels like a verbal triathalon. It sometimes feels like warmth has to crawl on it's belly through a Sahara of syntax to make it's presence known. It sometimes feels like a ton is attached to the tongue, and communication sounds heavy. Try talking when your tongue has become an anchor. 

Imagine adjusting from the floating fluidity of Italian, or sweet serenade of Zulu, or the dynamic dance of Spanish to the complicated confines of English. It's like telling a dancer she works best at a desk. It's easy to make French sound beautiful and romantic, each syllable is a love story. 

It takes extra effort to make English sound less than computerized and mechanic, 

especially in a society where we try to access love through computers

where we treat people like machines, and emotions like disease, 

where nuance has become a nuisance and intimacy is obsolete.

This is why it is considered a foreign language...it is just as distant poetically as it is geographically.

This is why we love accents.

 They melt the edges off the ice that come with English. They make it warm enough to forget the cold, but not hot enough to change it. Make us forget it's hardened tones before we remember that an accent is simply a heated blanket, and our language still has the bite of winter.

When you grow up loving in another language, she loves you back openly, invitingly, completely. You hear her sprinting through sound waves to touch you. She has cultivated culture in the cadence of hello, and makes greetings sound like romance.

But English is like a hardened woman. English keeps rigid barriers around her heart and you have to work with sweat on brow, back breaking effort to make her stoic face smile, and even then you wonder if it is real. English has been abused, and she sometimes feels cliche. Familiar, but empty. Most give up on her, defeated by her difficulty. People don't like when their words sound like kissing steel, so they settle for a diluted version of her. English won't embrace you like Creole will. She may not even be able to love you back being broken the way she's been. But you still try.

This is one of the reasons why I have such admiration for people who speak multiple languages fluently, or people who did not speak English natively and learned in adulthood. The free flying color that dripped from lips now sounds like black and white ink. Sometimes feels like a monochromatic heartbeat trying to sound like a rainbow again. 

But this is also why I love poets. They make paintings out of water and use their hearts to add color. They mold audible masterpieces out of linguistic concrete. They make English sound like a sunset mid August, where sand kisses ocean and we feel as infinite as she, both of us bodies of water. 

Thank you for the challenge, God. Of being born word lover in New York instead of Venice, or Johannesburg, or Brazil. I know all I have in my arsenal are a pen and a voice box, but I don't mind working a little harder to make Monday sentences sound like sonnets on a Sunday morning. I don't mind finding ten thousand ways to say I love you in a language that only has one word for love.

 I don't mind loving a broken woman.