XXXanXd then hXe ...

There it is — what writing looked like before computer processing. In those days all writers were forced to build a relationship with the "X" key, corrective tape or drippy White Out. It made it obvious that writing is a process involving many mistakes. At best, rewrites are tedious endeavors; add to it the painstaking effort that used to be required in making those mistakes go away, and you have a recipe for despair.

The frustrations of typing surely drove mere dabblers into less-exasperating venues of creativity, like classical harp playing or clogging, possibly depriving the world of potential greats in the vein of Shakespeare, Browning and Seuss. I found myself among those detoured by the typewriter, when college life became my writer's block. Too poor to hire a professional typist, my perfectly brilliant marketing research paper went from an A to a C solely on the basis of typos and excessive Xs. The professor's note did little to console me: "Excellent work. Learn to type."

I would, if I aspired to be a typist, I thought smugly. Instead, I determined to boycott the creativity-stifling machine, that is until the next semester when another paper was due — and another and another. Ironically, by the time I took a job on the college newspaper staff as a reporter, I was down to only two or three mistakes per page.

Still, I may not have pursued the writing life had my destiny not crossed paths with technology at just the right time. Today, revising is a snap with "cut and paste," and my indecision has found friends in "undo" and "redo." Among my favorite writing companions is "delete." So amiable is this key friend that he can change, "I thank my dog for you" into "I thank my God for you" with no one the wiser. He gives me the freedom to vent my frustrations in a perfectly composed diatribe to a teacher, and then replace it with "your help is appreciated." Delete takes away the misinformed, the mistaken, the maligned and the misconstructed, as if they had never been.

Then with the click of the equally faithful "save" key, the better version is permanently recorded and ready to be sent forth to its intended reader, with no hint of the Herculean struggle which forged it. (Spoiler alert: It took five revisions to polish that sentence.)

It's not obvious anymore that writing is a process of crafting, editing, reworking and beating your head on the keys. Only I must endure my own inadequate attempts, so my readers never will. It's all part of the writing; and it's also part of life.

Each one of us is writing a life story that is being read by those around us. Some are content to leave all the mistakes, unedited and raw, unwilling to make a single alteration and often best left unread. Others revise only the most obvious errors, offering a story that avoids offense but inspire nothing. And then there are those who strive to write a life destined to become an enduring classic read and beloved by many. Such people are far from perfect, yet their stories are worth reading because they, more than any, understand God's ability to delete the mistakes and insert love.

"The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love ... he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:8-12

In that forgiveness we find the courage to write a better story.

"You show that you are a letter from Christ ... written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts." 2 Corinthians 3:3-4

The letter of our lives is not meant to be a masterpiece, but a piece of the Master for all the world to read.