Monday, December 22, 2025

Love Permeates

By Melissa Harris

So I am supposed to be a writer. Not just in a need-to-write, destined-to-write, gotta-write sense, but in the sense that I teach writing and therefore should do it regularly and do it well.

When I do write, though, it is scary and feels much too vulnerable. Because when I thought writing was a place I could safely speak my innermost feelings and thoughts without the criticisms and belittling of my family, I was wrong. 

My mother, mainly, who did not want to listen to what I wanted to share in conversation, would find journals or diaries I had written just as something to gossip with family about or to laugh at with her friends during nightly phone conversations. When I really wanted to put something into writing, I would put it in school notebooks where prying eyes never cared to look. The other thing about writing was that it was only an acceptable activity if I was going to be a poet laureate, win a Nobel Prize for Literature, or at least publish some best-selling novel. So writing became another hidden place and another example of how being my authentic self was unacceptable.

Another thing about writing? I don’t do it perfectly.I don’t always get the syntax right. Sometimes I split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions. And sometimes I even break rules on purpose because I think the words communicate better that way.

My writing relationship is a lot like many people's love relationships: hidden, unauthentic, imperfect, and even fragile.

God’s love changes everything. Jesus came into our darkest places to heal our brokenness and shame. Jesus is perfect love: accepting, listening, caring, understanding, and redeeming. He is the gift – the Love – the Word – that meets and exceeds every prophecy and expectation. 

With His love, I can even write an imperfect devotional from a place of vulnerability and trust that Jesus’s love will permeate the page for the reader.