The Red Pen
In my journey from there to here, I never planned to be an author.
No. Never. Words were my dad’s thing.
Dad was a ninth-grade English teacher who promised the class each year that if they all got 100% on their weekly spelling tests, he would stand on his head. On his desk. Dad was a bit fanatical about words.
The summer I was sixteen, I was at a camp for one month. I sent weekly letters home to my parents. On mail day during the third week of camp, I was surprised to receive two letters from home.
I opened Mom’s letter first, saving Dad's letter for last.
Mom's letter was filled with stories of the new baby rabbits in the hutch by the barn, of the green beans almost ready to be picked, and what she was bringing to the potluck at church that Sunday.
Ripping open the second envelope, I was puzzled when I took out the two letters that I had sent to them the previous weeks. Both neatly corrected by my dad.
The following edits were made in red pen: an added apostrophe, several commas and a note scribbled in his handwriting on when to use “loose” and “lose.”
In closing, “Love, Dad" was written in the side margin.
Like I said, he was fanatical about words.
Fast forward years later…when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I remember calling my husband using slow motion fingers.
When he answered the phone, no words would come out. How was I going to tell him that I had the same disease that killed both his parents?
All I could do was sob. Cancer had stolen my words.
I began treatment. The cancer had been caught early. The prognosis was good.
But then my dad was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma, followed soon afterwards by my mom with stage 3 ovarian which quickly digressed to stage 4.
Suddenly all of us were seeing oncologists and dealing with the editing pen of cancer, slashing with red marks on all our lives.
Cancel your plans. Cancer your dreams. Cancer your life.
After my parents started treatment, I discovered the words that had been silenced from my tongue on the day of my diagnosis, began to bubble up inside me and refused to be silenced.
I began blogging. Writing. Telling our family’s story.
At first, I would ask Dad and Mom to proofread my posts, because one of my strongest beliefs was, and still is, that people’s stories belong to them.
But soon, Dad told me that I did not need to check with them any longer, that I could write whatever I wanted.
What? What did he mean I could write whatever I wanted? What about the proper use of lay and lie and (gasp) dangling prepositions? And what if—heaven forbid—I had an apostrophe out of place?
But then I realized something.
I realized they wanted me to record their story, to give words to their suffering, to inscribe their names onto paper and declare, “We were here.”
One of the greatest gifts we give those who are suffering is to stand with them and announce, “I will be your witness.”
Later, when I began talking to those in the publishing industry about writing our family’s story, I was told politely, and in no uncertain terms, that with 1.7 million people diagnosed with cancer each year, I was not famous enough to represent the cancer community.
Another red pen.
Yet God chose to swing wide the door of our family’s story when my book, Under a Desert Sky: Redefining Hope, Beauty, and Faith in the Hardest Places, was traditionally published.
Cancer could not silence the words.
Perhaps, you have known the words of The Red Pen; the editing voice inside your head that tells you that your story is not valuable.
It is a lie.
Give words to your story.
You see I discovered my dad was right. There is a significant difference between “loose” and “lose.”
Of all the things The Red Pen has taken, please do not LOSE your story.
Do not ever allow The Red Pen to erase your words.
