Life doesn't have an un-do key

My earliest writings, other than class assignments, were letters. We had a corner mail box and the red flag was frequently in the up position, signaling the postman to stop and pick up outgoing mail. Once a letter went out, I would check the mail faithfully, hoping to see my name written on the front of the envelopes delivered. It seemed to take forever.

When Danny and I settled in Worland, Wyo., I became a stay-at-home, mother-in-waiting. He worked across the street at the Pepsi plant and came home for lunch every day, but without a television or a phone, I was hard-pressed to keep myself occupied during the rest of his work day. So, I took up my old letter writing habit, shooting off one or two handwritten pages each day to different family members around the country. And began, again, to endure the long wait for a return message to arrive.

Corresponding today is much faster. Overall, that is a good thing. Sometimes, not so much.

Letter writing takes time. Especially when writing in longhand. Sentences are formed first in the mind, with plenty of mental self-editing taking place, before anything is committed to paper. After all, no one likes receiving a letter filled with strike-outs and over-writes. And rewriting for me always means re-thinking, making additional strike-outs and over-writes inevitable. That is the primary reason I am so appreciative of word processors. My fingers fairly fly across the keyboard, and unless you're looking over my shoulder, you never know how many of those keystrokes are backspaces.

The Internet has not only made instant communication possible, it has made it prolific. I not only love to write, I love to read. I do a lot of both now in front of a computer screen, rather than at my kitchen table or curled up in a corner on the couch. Read a story online and the opportunity to comment is instantly available, capturing whatever emotion prevails at that moment.

This, too, has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. I don't know why I am inevitably drawn to the comments section that follow stories or opinion pieces online, but I am, especially if there are a lot of comments. Some of those comments could have waited. Some of those comments should have waited. Some of those comments should never have been written in the first place. (I don't see many of those, the Web editors remove the most caustic or distasteful as soon as they become aware of them.) There is wisdom to be found in the statement, "Sleep on it." Almost everything looks better in the light of a new day than it does in the passion of the moment.

All too often the comments begin to take on a life of their own, the original piece soon forgotten, the online commentators squaring off behind party lines, religious beliefs or lack thereof, or any other divisive issue. Some of the comments can become rather rancorous, eliciting rancor in return, until all of the parties involved finally tire of the exercise or exceed the time their physical therapist has authorized at the keyboard, lest their carpel tunnel collapse, mid-stroke.

Years ago, following my mother's death, my sisters and brothers and I had the unenviable task of going through some of her possessions. Daddy couldn't face it, and asked us to go through at least some of Mom's stuff before we went home. I found a shoe box full of letters, from me, to Mom, written over the course of seven or eight years time. It was an interesting moment of introspection. I had only enough time to glance briefly at them, but I saw enough to wish in some cases, I had "slept on it" a little longer, or perhaps taken the time to strike-out and over-write. As the years passed, page by page, I could almost see the changes time had wrought, both in penmanship and content. How I felt one day on an issue was apparently subject to change. Perhaps new information came to light, or a person whose opinion I valued challenged my position, casting it in a different light, or perhaps I was just growing up a little more each day.

That experience did teach me to choose my words more carefully, especially important now, because unlike those only Mom cared to keep, some of them might outlive me, whether in newsprint or online.

There are many things in my life that I wish I could over-write or do-over, and there are many things in my life I wish I could strike-out altogether. I cannot.

But I know One who can. Mankind hasn't cornered the market on writing, after all. A recent reading in the third chapter of Malachi underscores my point. "Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name. 'They will be mine,' says the Lord Almighty, 'in the day when I make up my treasured possession.'"

A passage in the 20th chapter of Revelation drives the point home, "And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books."

This passage is ameliorated, however, by the promise found in Isaiah 43:25, "I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more."

I may not be able to un-say, un-do, un-write or even un-think, though I may long to do so with all that is in me, but I know One who can.

"But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken." Matthew 12:36 (NIV)