“No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo

Ideas are powerful. After all, it was a new idea that led Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Ideas can affirm or challenge our way of living, thinking, and feeling. Ideas can be like bolts of lightning—coming quickly and radically altering the people in their path. But most often, for me, I’ve found ideas to be more like how they’re described in Inception: like a virus, something which cannot be shaken once caught, with a certain level of inevitability.

They are like electrons around an atom—seemingly innocuous, but at the right time, when moved in the right way, they change the chemistry and charge of their atom.

Ideas are like the first pebbles that become an avalanche of change.

When I look at my own life, I never see an idea come and alter me immediately. Instead, it was always a series of compounding and complimentary ideas that snowballed into something. Long before I ever responded to God’s call to church plant, I was reading David Platt’s Radical and then Follow Me. And long before that, my mom bought a series of missionary biographies. First, they were read by my older siblings, and years later, my mom put one in my hands. It was about Jim Elliot. And there were countless conversations with my parents and siblings about church, about evangelism, about the mission handed to the Church by Jesus himself. There was reading Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship. There were my mom’s prayer lists, lists that prompted us to pray for salvations for friends and neighbors and for the missionaries on the frontier of the gospel. There were so many pieces of the Bible that echoed through my childhood (I think specifically of Romans 10:13-15).

All of these were adding to and shading in (by the power of the Holy Spirit), the idea that so great a salvation from so great a Lord must go to the ends of the earth, and that I was responsible to take it as far as God called me—to my neighbors, to my friends, to my coworkers, to broken and dying and sinful people at whatever cost.

This idea took years to develop (from very early childhood to the pressure-cooking of my later teen years), and countless blogs, articles, books, and songs cultivated it in me. And behind all those blogs, articles, books, and songs were people. The Holy Spirit bridged space and time between me and these other souls and worked through the words I found from them. Incredible.

And then: the crystallization of an idea into a belief.

After that, there is the conversion of belief into action. Like gasoline in a fuel tank, a belief does nothing unless it is converted into action or work (gas providing energy for a car to move, for example). The internal, hidden belief must manifest itself outwardly.

I’m sure many have written more eloquently and logically and fully on the life cycle of an idea, and I will gladly take recommendations for further reading. The point of this is not to offer a complete treatise on ideas but instead to explain what is coming.

People have been telling me to write for many, many years—write stories, write blog posts, write letters, write novels, write books! And for a while I did. For years I did.

But then I stopped. For years.

While there are many contributing factors to why I stopped (and why I would try to start again only to stop again and run away), three particular reasons kept me from getting traction again.

First, I am so young. I have nothing to say that someone wiser hasn’t said better. After years of writing and blogging as a teenage hooligan with big opinions and bigger naivety, I finally realized this.

Second, I have a fear of self-promotion. It feels good when people affirm and encourage my giftings, and I came to regard that feeling as necessarily a bad thing. I am both proud and terrified of being proud. So I stopped using what was largely recognized as one of my greatest giftings. I was haunted by the idea that I’m a glory thief—someone seeking something that belongs to God alone.

Third, I learned there are repercussions to saying the wrong thing (or at least saying what not everyone agrees is The Right Thing). And out of fear of man, I became paralyzed by how impossible it is to keep everyone happy. I realized I couldn’t control how people received my words or perceived me.

And so I shut down. For a long time.

Now, here I am. I do not know what is in my own heart. Any time I seek to do any good, I find my motives mixed at best. But I have felt the clear pressure in my soul for over a year that I ought to be writing and ought to be sharing some of my writing again.

One day, I will stand before Jesus, and we’ll discuss my life and how I stewarded my time, my heart, my gifts, my resources, and all that jazz. And I will. not. say, “I knew you to be a hard Master, so I was afraid, and I buried what you gave me.” I will. not. say, “I couldn’t tell if my heart was pure or not, and I knew you to be a hard Master, so I neglected what you gave me.” I will. not. bury my writing in the ground anymore. I refuse to let the fear of doing something (anything) with motives that aren’t 100% pure keep me in inaction.

I would rather do something and have it burn up like straw or wood on the last day than do nothing.

My heart is Jesus’ to sort out.

This conviction has been stirring in my soul for months now, and it’s spilling out in my life in several areas. Finally, it’s reaching this rusty ol’ rag of a blog (as one of my brothers calls Penprints).

I have been silent for years because I don’t want to unnecessarily offend. And because I know there is little nothing I can say that someone wiser has not said better. But not anymore. I still don’t want to offend, and I still know I know so little. But I’m less afraid of people now.

I think of all the things I have read and brushed up against my whole life and how the Holy Spirit has used all those little pebbles of ideas to avalanche me into knowing God more. And I think of all those people who wrote those books and articles and songs and stories that carried me along. I think of even the short, fifteen second exposure to ideas that have cumulatively (along with everything else) changed my life.

So I am going to start throwing pebbles of my own. Because if I can throw a pebble that helps someone else grow closer to God or grow deeper in their love for him or grow deeper in their understanding of his love for them… what an honor.

I’m not here to showcase my genius. There isn’t much of that by any measure. But I am here to earnestly and hopefully and prayerfully (and I’m sure with many typos) cast my bread upon the waters, knowing somewhere out there is a fellow pilgrim who may find what’s here as a stepping stone in their pursuit of God.

Further up and further in,

Rosalie

p.s. – now that I’m older, I have this idea that now is the time to button up and serious down this blog. After all, I’m not fifteen any more. But we shall see. I’m probably too Type B for that. Polish is overrated.

p.p.s. – sharing writing regularly will be occurring here and on my Instagram. For this ol’ rusty ol’ rag of a blog, look for Penprints emails every other Saturday (ish).

p.p.p.s. – also, if you’ve followed along this whole time because I can be wildly hilarious, never fear, I’m here for the Lord but also the lolz.