How Writing Saves Me

Tana Denney
Tue, 27 Dec 2016 19:31:49 +0000

When I was a little girl, I sat deep in my room with my door closed; just me, my pen and my notebook. By my window, I sat with my headphones on my head as music was serenaded my soul. I wrote poems and songs that told stories of my life as a child and what I thought my future would only hold. Little did I know what I wrote about was fairy tales; just as a little girl dreams of. The images of imagination sat centered on my paper as my pen unfolded them all on every line as my words grew. They were dreams that became many notebooks full.

I had plans to move to Nashville. I was going to become a songwriter. My mind was set. Music and writing were my passion at 8-years-old. I'd write on vacations. I'd write with friends and, believe it or not, I'd sing the songs I wrote to them. If you'd ask me to sing for you today, I'd probably say, "Nah!" I'm totally shy in that way. If you ask me to show you my Rubbermaid container full of songs and poems I've written, I'd be glad to. I couldn't tell you how much I've leaned on music throughout life. I still do. Daily, music is my inspiration.

Music has embraced my life with the absolute truest of love. People sing, people play and people write music. People make it big, but for some like me, we become something totally different. I'm now a mother, I'm not living in Nashville nor am I a big-time song writer, but I'm the one behind that music note. I'd be the one who tells stories because music speaks words that we cannot find the right fittings for. My writings and songs are my passions. It's a dream I will never give up or lose hope in fighting for because I am here now. I've made my way sharing my words this way, so at least apart of me isn't absent from the world.

Growing up, I was one who stayed home. Friends would be out and about and I'd be home writing. Writing saved me from lonely nights, being afraid and from being somebody I wasn't. Writing saved me. It helped me write about Jesus when that Devil was fighting in my life.

Writing has always been true words my heart has spoken. Sometimes driving down the road, I'd stop and write down a verse because it went with a song or a poem I was working on. Or, like right now, an idea popped up in my head to write now, right here on the Odyssey. My mind is constantly working on something. I feel God not only made me a wife and a mother; but he also made me an artist. An artist of all aspects of life. A writer. A thinker. A music lover. A human being in which writing saved.

How did it save me? Sit on your couch. Listen to lyrics. Listen to the rhythm and the beat. Listen to how it takes your worries away and how it captivates your soul. Pay attention to how nothing else matters in that moment. Look at the writers who wrote the song. Look at the writer who wrote the article or the book you're nose-deep in reading. We all do it for something. It's not a job. It's a love.

Writing lies deep within every word and every paragraph of my heart. My readers might just get a gist of it, but how I feel and how my heart pours it's way into words is seen by them and they can read my feelings. I'll continue. You just do me a favor and continue to come back.

Let music be your company beside your steering wheel of life. Jesus and music are a pretty good mix. Let the words write themselves. One day you'll look back at all your scriptures of life. You either wrote a good book, in the process of turning pages, or a book that just hasn't ended yet, so you keep going. Don't ever miss the chance of writing something that someone would never forget. Live life exactly how you want. But, in all... do it well.

In the end, we all become stories. Make sure yours will be one that will want to be retold, not revised.

- T