Meet Jamie…

My name is Jamie, and this is my story of how God redeemed my “words.”

I have always been a “wordy” person, meaning I enjoy words and I express myself well through words. From my teenage years through my late twenties, I was a prolific writer. I journaled nearly every day, filling notebook after notebook with my thoughts, prayers, and hopes. I had significant damage in many areas of my life (emotional abuse, sexual abuse, difficult generational patterns, etc.), and I often found that the thing that helped me the most was writing it all out. I was often so astonished at the insights I would have when pouring out my thoughts through writing, in journal entries or creative stories.

When I attended my first Rapha workshop in 2011, I was overcome by the power of a new set of tools: the spiritual house and the empty chair. While I was clumsy with them at first, I found these two tools were profound in how they helped me in accessing and releasing deep, deep emotion—emotion that even pages of journaling hadn’t always been able to touch. This was perhaps the first time that I truly experienced and dared believe that I didn’t have to cope with the damage I had carried, because I was seeing it leave, firsthand!

After a few months of pursuing my Rapha journey using these new tools, I had the startling realization that somewhere along this path, my ability to write creatively was gone. I had a deep love of using my writing to create worlds, characters, and storylines with an ease that felt like a gift. As I realized that this gift seemed to have left me, the disorientation and despair that filled me was more than I can describe.

For the first time in my life I had to consider who I was if I wasn’t a “writer.” Did I still have value? Did I still have a voice? Did I still have something to say? I found with each of these questions, I started to realize two things: 1) that I’d deeply tied my identity and value to my ability to write, and 2) that in my damage I had used my writing gift in an unhelpful way. Instead of it being a gift that was filled with life and freedom, my writing had become burdened with my need to process the incredible pain and trauma I was carrying.

I have to admit that when I realized this, I was disheartened. I was and am in a faith journey, so when I was exploring this knowledge with the Lord, I feel He told me that He not only wanted to heal the trauma I was carrying, but the trauma my writing was carrying—and part of the healing required that I lay my creative writing down, completely.

It took several months for me to process this as I deeply loved my writing and the benefit of having my identity and value tied to it(!) But I eventually came to a point where I was able to say to the Lord, “I am going to choose to learn the ways that you value and love me just as Jamie … even if I never write another word again.” I can’t articulate what a huge declaration this was, nor what a huge sacrifice it was to consider (and accept) that I might never again write creatively.

Probably a year after doing that piece of homework, I was attending the Women’s Weekend Away in Montana. Susan was giving us words from the Lord, and my word (no joke) was “Words.” As we were taught to do, I tried not to pre-judge what my word meant … but the fruit of it in the following year became apparent. I started writing again, but not in the way I expected.

The first use of my “words” came in my Rapha group. I found that I was able to put “words” to what others were feeling or navigating in their homework; I was able to help articulate aspects of their journey or their pain that they couldn’t easily find expression for. I also started volunteering my “words” to the Rapha ministry in some of the handouts or meeting notes we recorded, and was surprised by how often people told me that I had a gift for being able to capture intangible concepts concisely.

At this point, it was still too painful to try and access my creative “words” … but as I watched my “words” start to grow in the ways I offered them to the Rapha community, I very quietly began to hope that perhaps my creative “words” would someday come back to me, too.

A few more years after my “words” started to flourish on behalf of others, my husband gently asked me how I felt about my creative “words.” Right before I had started my Rapha journey in 2011, I had written the rough draft to a novel that I dearly loved, but that had been rejected multiple times by various agents and publishers. My husband had suggested many times that perhaps it would be healing for me to self-publish my novel, if only to honor the Jamie I had been in 2011 as well as the Jamie I was becoming.

As I considered his question once more, I realized for the first time that I didn’t feel any of the pain or trauma that had been there in the past. For the first time since I’d received my “words” back from the Lord I realized that, completely unnoticed by me, He had brought healing to my creative writing. I finally, finally felt ready to engage in my creative “words” once more.

As I edited the novel I had written in 2011, I felt for the first time that my writing was simply itself—that it was no longer carrying the unfair and unhelpful burden of trying to be the avenue of my healing. Instead it was part of the anointing and gifting that the Lord had given me. And I agreed with the Lord that it was good.

In the spring of 2019, I am so proud to say that I have birthed my first novel, Walking Through Spaces, into the world. While the journey of reclaiming my “words” was confusing, painful, and sometimes disorienting, I am so grateful, humbled, and in awe of the journey the Lord has taken me on, and the fact that He has restored my “words” to me. I look forward to the journey ahead as my “words” and I get to know one another again.

For more information about Jamie’s first novel, 
Walking Through Spaces, click here.