I hope you enjoyed your Valentine’s Day. I’ve longed for a spare minute to sit down and pass along a few delicious quotes to you … but my schedule has been crazy lately.

When I visited my parents a few weeks ago, I brought a few books I hoped to find time to read. Of course, mom’s library stack trumped what I’d brought. She’d checked out Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight, which I picked up, thinking I’d skim a few chapters.

Instead, I engulfed her whole book in one night. This book is a compilation of Sue’s early inspirational stories for Guideposts magazine. They’re exquisite, especially her descriptions of motherhood. Whenever I wrestle with doubts that God has called me to be a writer, I need to read something like this:

I believe in stories. The world has enough dogma. It’s stories we need more of, stories that reverence that still, small voice that sings our life. As Anthony de Mello observed, “The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.”

Jesus, Himself, told stories about the most common things in the world: a lost sheep, a seed that falls on rocky ground, a woman who sweeps her house in search of a coin, a man whose son runs away from home.

All personal theology should begin with the words: “Let me tell you a story.”

(from Sue Monk Kidd’s Firstlight, page 34-35).

I’ve been working so hard lately managing my home and family that I haven’t allowed that still, small voice to emerge. Is it still there? I wonder.

I know that God is using me through my hands, as I wash the dishes, tend the bumped knees and scrapes, pour the cough medicine, turn the pages in the books I read aloud, turn the steering wheel in my mom-taxi, make the beds, mop the floors, fold the clothes, touch those I love.

He’s using me through my voice, as I offer encouraging words to my family.

He’s using me through my ears, as I listen, sometimes over and over again to the same stories.

But my pen? I don’t know.