We climbed the stairs, picked a bottle from the wall and we sat there at the table in the corner, talking about the voices in my heart, the stories and the struggles that are monopolizing words that land on paper sometimes softly and sometimes so loud.  We sat there trying to pull them apart, trying to unwrap the one thousand and one different threads and we began to tame them and line them up: first you and then you.  And what are you?  What are you going to be when you're out-loud and laid out and what then will that make us?

Later I lay in bed thinking about the weightiness, thinking about the great shaping and changing that words cause.  I had told him at the table that I might not show him all of it, I might not be able to show pieces of this to anyone.  There is a part of me that is afraid of what words can do.  Of the way they can change ideas and pictures and realities.  There is a part of me that is afraid of what I will create when I put something down in black on white paper.

We spoke of forthtelling in youth group last night.  I have heard the word so many times, have studied prophecy, exhortation, have listened to my mother tell me this is your gift, you remind people of what they are and speak into what they will be and I have always shook my head.  No, this is simply the power of words written and spoken.  This is what language does.  It manipulates and rearranges and destroys and creates and it pushes.

I sometimes think of the God who created language.  Who decided to give to us this thing that is always shifting, swaying, pulling.  This power that once used cannot be undone, this thing that so easily cuts to our hearts, raises our spirits.