On Giving My Whole Life Away

Thoughts on writing as hospitality.

I’ve never been able to shake this feeling. That to engage in public writing is essentially to give pieces of my life away.

In mastering the craft, writers seek to do more than just pull back the curtain and allow the world to gather at the window. They hope to bring others fully inside an experience.

Truly honest and vulnerable work grants readers insider status, allowing them into intimate and vulnerable spaces—inviting them to settle in, take a seat, and breathe the same air as the writer’s own thoughts, fears, joys, memories, and imagination.

So the more I write, the more of myself I feel I’m giving away.

And I haven’t always been sure how to feel about that.

---

Recently, I was invited to see writing as a form of hospitality.

Within the framework of historic Christian practice, hospitality is both a spiritual gift and a sacred responsibility—and a natural outworking of active faith.

Within hospitality, giving isn’t a loss. It’s an open-handed sharing of life’s good gifts that brings others in—that widens the circle.

Hospitality invites all, both strangers and friends alike, directly into our communal spaces, homes, and lives, as we give of our own resources to meet both material and immaterial needs.

Is this not what public writing does?

With our words, writers bring friends, strangers, and even foes into the deepest parts of ourselves—into our very minds and hearts—intending to give of what we have to meet others where they are.

---

When people speak of the “gift” of writing, they’re often referring to the raw talent writers possess.

But there’s another way to view the “gift” of writing—as both the process and the result.

So here I am, practicing my gift.

In the way I seek to hold my words before the world, open-handed.

As an invitation.

As a form of hospitality.

As a good gift to be shared.