Last fall a reader asked me, “Why do you write? I mean, what is your purpose?”

And I had a couple of answers ready for them.

Because I have always wanted to.

Because, I have a story to tell and maybe one day it can be published, if I can just discipline myself to write regularly.

Both are genuine reasons and both are true. But they don’t touch on the answer. And anyone who writes, whether as a profession or just daily bits in their journal, knows what I am getting at here.

It is hard to describe the urge I have had since I was so very young. Like, the thrill I felt at age 12 when someone gave me a pack of stationary for my birthday and I imagined my pen running across it. Or, the joy I get over a new journal or notebook. Or, the way I collect random thoughts on Post-it® notes. Or, the comforting smell of the pages of a book. Or, the tears that flow when I read some Facebook poet’s latest ramblings. Or, even the way that I can listen to almost any genre of music because it is the lyrics that feed me.

For many years I wrote in journals and to an audience of one. It was just me and at times, I imagined, my god. It was just my heart and soul pouring out to nothingness.

At some points in my life others have said, “Hey, you could really reach people with your stories.” And I have wondered their purpose in saying that. What would their agenda be if they had my stories?

As Toni Morrison so wisely said and I have so thoroughly felt, language may be the measure of my life. And I am of an age that I realize that I have more to lose than I have to gain if I do not put the words down in a way that is meaningful to me.

If I were asked that same question now, if the same reader asked, “Steph, why do you write?”, this is what I would say.

I have lived and lost and poured out and been broken and healed and laughed deeply and loved richly and dared greatly and hoped pointlessly, and learned incredibly. And, for whatever reason, words are what come to me. At any and every point words were and are there. And, even when I am sitting with a journal and an audience of one, I care how those words are crafted and what those words convey and how they roll on the tongue when read aloud. It all matters to me and is, to me, the measure of life.

Former Evangelical homeschool mom and one-time missionary and pastor’s wife, Stephanie Logan, aka Snicklefritz, writes from her life story and four decades of experience in the evangelical movement. Her views and stories are her own.

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