There's just something about empty notebooks that fascinates me. Despite my fetish for words and my desire to write them, I prefer to do it on the computer and leave my journals blank. I can't bring myself to mar the perfect, unwritten surface.
What is it, do you think? It's not the perfection of the paper. I've no trouble ruining that. It's not the newness. I love old paper and the smell of it mixed with ink.
Maybe it's the same emptiness that you feel in a completely void room. No furniture, no dust. Just the room. Nothing to distract, just the allowance of your imagination.
I find this addiction to emptiness odd. You'd expect it to be chilling; repulsive even. But at times, emptiness is queerly filling.
I've come to the conclusion that emptiness is fulfilling to me in the sense that it is uncluttered by myths and babble. It opens its arms to reflection, communion, and relations with God. It beckons me to come and willingly throw away distractions and focus my attentions on the Lover and Creator of my soul.
Somehow, when I think about it that way, it makes the emptiness even more intoxicatingly tempting to me. I have been struggling with the way it is so easy for me to forget to spend time with Him. I say that I'm too busy, that I have work and school to be done, and I end up pushing Him into a thirty-second prayer time before bed. I end up filling my notebook with childish complaints and excuses.
As Rich Mullins said so perfectly in one of his most beautiful songs: "I'd rather fight you for somethin' I don't really want, than take what you give that I need."
God wants to give us what we need: the love, compassion, empathy and joy that can be found in Him alone. Yet, we often fight Him for something we don't want: shallow passions, unhealthy friendships, and superficial clutches at things we don't understand.
But
"Your grace rings out so deep, makes my resistance seem so thin."
Praise Jesus for his grace.
Ah, I have the same problem! Many notebooks and all my writing on the computer. :)
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