What I Came To Do

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

—Ephesians 2:10

There are a thousand things I do just because I’m human and I have to, and when I do them I certainly don’t feel any spark of having been created for something very specific and tender.

But every once in a while, when I write, I feel that feeling of a thousand slender threads coming together, strands of who I’ve been and who I’m becoming, the long moments at the computer and the tiny bits of courage, the middle of the night prayers and the exact way God made me, not wrong or right, just me. I feel like I’m doing what I came to do, in the biggest sense. That’s why I write, because sometimes, every once in a while, I feel entirely at home in the universe, a welcome and wonderful feeling. I could cry at that feeling, because it happens so rarely. Doing the hard work of writing makes me feel like I’m paying my rent on a cosmic level. Writing wakes me up, lights me on fire, opens my eyes to the things I can never see and feel when I’m hiding under the covers, cowering and consumed with my own failures and fears.