Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

“Better to write for yourself and have no public than to write for your public and have no self.”

Anonymous

If you’re a regular to Prevailing Winds, you’ll notice that for the last two to three weeks, I haven’t been.

A regular, that is. I not only haven’t posted since my Oct. 21 recommendation of 5-year-old Isaac’s Scrambled Quesadilla recipe, but I also took down two posts referring to politics in the Church national as well as in the church local. 

I have left the Moscow church I had called home for almost five years, and what I wrote caused hurt feelings.  In the interest of the “as far as it lies within you” part of Romans 12:18, I removed what I posted.  While I’m not entirely convinced that I was wrong in writing what I initially did, I would have been wrong to value my right to maintain a position over the righteousness of being in peace with people I once worshiped with and still love.  So I deleted them. It was an easy call in a difficult time.

Not so easy was having received three different comments in mid-October regarding the tone and tenor of Prevailing Winds — a tone that three people, three Christian women who know me well, saw as angry, divisive, and unproductive.  When three sisters in Christ say similar things, it doesn’t take a profound degree of spiritual maturity to wonder what the Lord is saying.  He may not be saying exactly what they’re saying, but I dared not indulge in the quick and easy avoidance of genuine discipline from the Holy One by assuming that it was just a coincidence, or that they were simply tenderhearted and conflict-averse, or somehow just didn’t understand me.  Those things might be true, but coming to that conclusion, if I ever did, had to come after a period of soul-searching and God-listening.

The risk of choosing not to hear from the Lord when the Lord is clearly speaking is significant.  The disciple not only might miss a needed corrective, or an unexpected affirmation, but also can risk easily turning from the Lord and embracing active disobedience, all because the message delivered might be even more painful than the original comments from friends. 

There had to be something for me to learn.  I wanted to learn it.

So I decided not to write until Election Day.  I chose not to read any local Christian contributions to the blogosphere, and I tried to avoid discussion of what people call “politics.”  Because if the Lord wanted to speak to me about something, he shouldn’t have to bellow to get my attention.  And, at a point of great weariness, sadness, and loss, I wanted — needed — to hear from him more than I wanted to hear accolades and affirmation, however sincere, from others.  If close friends felt I was losing my way in my writing, I needed to risk that my God felt the same way, too. 

I’ll admit that the beginning of my hiatus was frightening.  Very.  It’s an election season, and people expect me to write!  The rule of blogging is that you lose readers if you don’t post with increasing frequency; to not write during the last three weeks of the campaign might mean that no one would be around to read when I began again.  It might make me irrelevant, it might make me unimportant, and it might even have resulted in my never starting up again.  More bracing, though, was the fear that God would affirm exactly what my friends had said — that I was not writing in obedience as a prophetic voice, but simply writing because I was angry and dismayed and wanted to vent.  That would mean great sin, past and, if I continued, in the future, and it could very well call into question what I and others have seen as my spiritual gifts. 

If I didn’t have my writing, and didn’t have it as “Keely writing,” how could I contain the intensity of passion I feel about so many things?  More important, how could I serve God, especially after having been so deluded before?  And so I may have turned off the voices that provoke or inform my writing, but I was flooded with “what-if”s and the possibility of a scolding voice from my Savior. 

If you know me at all, you can appreciate, I think, how risky it felt to turn off Prevailing Winds in order to reflect on criticisms I had received — especially during the waning hours of a contentious, monumental presidential campaign.  Still, risks notwithstanding, it was time to shut up and listen.

So. What did I hear? 

Perhaps my next few posts will give you a sense, and, after the election, I suppose I’ll talk more in detail about it.  But now you know why I was gone, and I hope you’ll stick around and see where it is that I’m heading.

I value your reading and I always seek your comments.  Your prayers matter greatly, too. Thanks, everyone.