Bare Your Soul & Bring Your Words: The Art of Writing Bravely
Updated: Jun 16, 2020
By Rachel Kang
God's Brave Women - Rachel's Story
Next to the potted plants—the lavender and the rosemary and the succulent—sits the coir-stitched welcome mat to our front door, which reads…
Bare Your Soles.
Bare your soles, it says. As in, take off your shoes and retire from travel. As in, stay a while to rest and unravel that actual soul of yours. Smooth out that wrinkle on your forehead, calm the beating of your heart to stillness, to presence.
The mat at my front door is like a welcome sign that beckons bystanders to walk and enter through, all barefoot and barely breathing, all desperate for a couch to catch their tired bodies.
Irrevocably, the same is true of a blank page—it is an invitation that bids,
Come. Bare your soul.
In her poem, Emily Dickinson makes mention of such bareness and boldness. “Tell the truth,” she writes. Emit your experience, share your sincerity, tell your truth. And, though, the rest of the poem’s line—but tell it slant—calls for the kind of truth-telling that is round about and circumventive, so as to “dazzle” what is harsh, what is hard, and what is heavy, I propose we tell the truth without manipulating our words to be safe, or acceptable, or sound, or nice.
Yes. Tell the truth. But tell it blunt.
On the page, when it’s only your eyes that peer and perceive, tell it unfiltered and tell it unabridged. In His presence, when it’s only his omniscience and his omnipresence, tell it plain and tell it blunt.
"On the page, when it’s only your eyes that peer and perceive, tell it unfiltered and tell it unabridged. In His presence, when it’s only his omniscience and his omnipresence, tell it plain and tell it blunt."
Walk and write in welcome toward your God, in boldness and in confidence. Bare the beatings of your heart—the brokenness, the very words buried within.
“Let us therefore come,” the letter says, “boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
This letter to Jewish believers encourages and exhorts them to remember and recall that their God is one who is unreservedly present; he is not emotionally unavailable—he is not too busy, or too big to be bothered.
That word, boldly, in this particular passage alludes to a kind of freedom of speech—a kind of invitation to confidently and bravely bare what is inside—letting words spill, thoughts unravel, prayers lift, and tears fall.
"That word, boldly, in this particular passage alludes to a kind of freedom of speech—a kind of invitation to confidently and bravely bare what is inside—letting words spill, thoughts unravel, prayers lift, and tears fall."
And, this invitation didn’t begin with the Hebrews, it began in the garden. It began when God first created man, created a home for man to have—a place and time in which God and man might coexist, walking side by side, like the lyrics of “In The Garden,” that gospel hymn of old,
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.
The Garden was the beginning of this beckoning, this call to bravely bring our hearts——our being— before God, our creator and heavenly father. And he is our eternal audience of one, ever listening and leaning into the longings of our hearts—the losses and the laments and the stories of our loving and our living.
He is a safe place—indeed, the safest. And he welcomes our words, both the spoken and the written ones, for they are the utterances of our traveling souls—utterances never meant to be undermined or undercut.
"He is a safe place—indeed, the safest. And he welcomes our words, both the spoken and the written ones, for they are the utterances of our traveling souls—utterances never meant to be undermined or undercut."
For, we matter—the state of our minds, hearts, bodies, and souls matters. Every detail divulged and every inexpressible, wordless groan—he is present in, he is proactive with, and he is pleased by the process of our hearts pouring out before his.
And, so, we wave the banner bluntly and blatantly—the one that bids we bare our souls. We walk as welcomed and wanted women—wives and mothers and daughters and friends.
We walk—bravely—as welcomed and wanted writers, baring our words and baring our souls, which are—foremost and forevermore—so beloved by God.
Brave Woman Manifesto
Make sure to check back next week as another courageous Sister shares her story!
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You are Brave!
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About Rachel
Rachel Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside of New York City. A mixed woman of African American, Native American, Dutch, and Irish descent, she writes prose, poems, and other pieces that whisper into the thin tension held between faith and life. Rachel is a graduate of Nyack College in New York where she obtained a degree in English with Creative Writing. Rachel is the creator of Indelible Ink Writers, an online community prompting journal keepers and closet poets through writing for and from the soul. Her writing has been featured on {in}courage, Fashion & Compassion, Charlotte Magazine, My Influence Circle, and Christianity Today. She lives a blink away from The Queen City with her husband and son.
Connect with Rachel at www.rachelmariekang.com, and on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter at @rachelmariekang.