This week I have been doing the most difficult writing I have ever had to do. As part of the commission I received at the beginning of the year, this is a piece I cannot lay aside and say it is too difficult. I have dreaded it. I have put it off. I find there are other things that are ‘more important’, that pull me away from my computer.

Yet there is nothing more important for me at this time than to write and complete this task. For it is given to me by God. And although I am completely unqualified to write it, in that I have no personal experience about the subject and it fills me with horror, I cannot avoid it or neglect it.

So I pray about it each day. How can God be glorified in words that make me shrink back into myself, my cosy, safe little home, my happy memories? How can putting such words down on paper help anyone to find healing? My ability to write is being sorely tested. The research I am doing is pushing me to the limit of my patience with others. My anger rises up. My heart breaks with compassion and sadness and my inability to help.

Yet perhaps what I write will help. Perhaps the words that are put down on paper are not, in fact, my words but God’s words. Perhaps I do not feel their power because I have not needed the healing they may bring. Perhaps … perhaps.

I stumble my way forward. Even this post is an excuse not to have to go back to this task at this time. Yet God has promised He will work through me, with me, in me as I fulfill this commission for Him.

So I will.

I will persevere, go on, write each painful word. I pray He will breathe life into the finished product so those who need to read it can sense His love and His joy in their existence. And that they, in turn may reach out and help another in His name.

Domestic abuse is a fact of life, a horrendous thing. May God use His words that I write down on paper at His request to bring healing to all who read and use them.

For His glory. For their hope.