Writing From the Middle of It
As I finished up my second last week at Woolworths before stepping into a new season at the Gold Coast University Hospital, on the eve of Good Friday, I found myself in a strange kind of space.
Not quiet.
Not chaotic.
Just full.
It’s a wild thing how even on days where your mind is locked into movement goals, timelines, responsibilities, things that need to be done something deeper can still cut through all of it without warning.
You can be thinking about shifts, routines, what’s next, what needs to be done… and then something from another season just breaks through the surface like it was never gone.
That’s what happened to me.
As I was walking into work, just moving through what should have been a normal moment, a memory came flooding back. Not gently. Not subtly. It hit with weight.
It took me straight back to a season I haven’t fully stepped away from, even if time says I should have by now.
A season where I was writing my first book — Kissed by Death My journey to finding life in the darkness
And as that memory came back, I realised something I hadn’t fully put words to before.
When I look back at that book now especially after reading through it again recently it doesn’t feel like I was writing about something that had already passed.
It feels like I was writing from the middle of it.
That might sound obvious on the surface. Of course I was close to it. Of course the wounds were fresh. But this feels deeper than that.
It doesn’t read like reflection.
It reads like presence.
Like I was sitting inside those moments again as I wrote them. Like I wasn’t reaching back into memory, but almost reliving something that hadn’t fully settled yet.
it whispers
There’s a difference between remembering pain and writing from inside it.
And I think when I wrote Kissed by Death, I hadn’t yet stepped far enough away from those experiences to separate myself from them.
I wasn’t documenting.
I was still carrying.
Still processing.
Still trying to understand what had happened to me, what it meant, and where God was in all of it.
And maybe that’s why the book feels the way it does.
Because it wasn’t written from a place of clean distance or polished understanding.
It was written from the tension.
From the in-between.
From that place where you’re no longer in the exact moment of suffering, but you’re not fully free from it either.
You’re still holding pieces of it.
Still feeling echoes of it.
Still trying to make sense of it.
And even now… I can feel that some of those things haven’t completely lifted. Those memories still feel raw and unfiltered.
There are parts of that story that I still carry weight from.
Not in a way that drags me backwards.
But in a way that reminds me those moments were real.
That they left something behind.
There are chapters I wrote that still feel close.
Not because I’m stuck in them…
But because they shaped something in me that didn’t just disappear when I finished the book.
I think sometimes we expect that once something is written, once it’s expressed, once it’s released into the world it somehow loses its hold.
Like putting words to something finalises it.
Closes it.
But that hasn’t been my experience.
Writing the book didn’t remove the weight.
It gave it language.
It gave it form.
It gave it a place to exist outside of me but it didn’t erase what it came from.
And maybe it was never meant to.
Because when I think about it honestly, those chapters weren’t just about what happened.
They were about what it did to me.
How it shaped me.
How it formed the way I see the world, the way I understand suffering, the way I look at faith.
And those things don’t just disappear.
They become part of you.
Not as something that defines you completely… but as something that has marked you.
And I think that’s why reading the book again felt different this time.
Not distant.
Not detached.
But almost like meeting a version of myself that was still in the middle of becoming.
There’s something confronting about that.
Because you realise that the person who wrote those words wasn’t standing on the other side of the fire.
He was still in it.
Still feeling the heat.
Still trying to understand what was happening.
And yet… he wrote anyway.
That’s the part that stayed with me as I walked into work that day.
Not just the memory of the season…
But the reality of what it meant to write in that place.
To sit down and put words together when things weren’t resolved.
When questions didn’t have clear answers.
When faith wasn’t something neat and structured, but something that had to be held onto in the middle of confusion.
I think sometimes we look back on finished work and assume it came from clarity.
But a lot of the time, it comes from wrestling.
From trying to find language for things that don’t sit easily.
From trying to hold truth and pain in the same space without one cancelling out the other.
And that’s what Kissed by Death was for me.
It wasn’t a clean story.
It had cracks and jagged edges.
It wasn’t a perfectly resolved narrative.
It was an honest one.
It was messy and carried chaos.
And honesty has weight.
Even after it’s written.
Even after it’s published.
Even after people read it and move on.
The person who wrote it still carries what it came from.
And I think that’s where I find myself now.
In a different season.
A new job.
A new environment.
A new rhythm.
But not disconnected from what came before.
Not separate from the journey that shaped everything I’m stepping into now.
If anything, that journey is the reason I’m able to step into it at all.
And maybe that’s why the thought has been sitting with me lately.
The idea of an updated author’s edition.
Not because the story has changed.
Not because I would rewrite it.
But because I’m not the same person who wrote it.
There’s something about looking back from where I am now that brings a different kind of understanding.
Not better.
Not superior.
Just further along.
More aware.
More settled in some areas.
Still carrying things in others.
And I wonder what it would look like to sit with that book again — not to change it, but to respond to it.
To acknowledge the version of me who wrote it.
To honour the place he was in.
But also to speak from where I am now.
To recognise what has shifted.
What has remained.
What has deepened.
Because the story didn’t end when the book was finished.
Life kept moving.
Faith kept forming.
Understanding kept unfolding.
And maybe there’s something meaningful in that continuation.
Not as a correction.
Not as an improvement.
But as a continuation of the same thread.
Because if there’s one thing I’m starting to see more clearly, it’s this:
The things we go through don’t just become “past.”
They become part of the way we move forward.
They sit beneath the surface of everyday moments.
They show up when we least expect them.
In a walk into work.
In a quiet thought.
In a memory that suddenly returns without warning.
And they remind us
We are not disconnected from where we’ve been.
We carry it.
But we don’t carry it the same way forever.
Something shifts.
Something settles.
Something slowly transforms.
And maybe that’s what I felt in that moment walking into Woolworths.
Not just memory.
Not just reflection.
But a quiet recognition that the story is still unfolding.
That the weight I once carried in confusion is now something I carry with a different kind of awareness.
That what once felt overwhelming now sits differently.
Not gone.
But changed.
And maybe that’s what growth actually looks like.
Not the removal of what we’ve been through…
But the transformation of how it lives within us.
And as I step into this new season into a new place, new responsibilities, new rhythms…
I don’t feel like I’m leaving that story behind.
I feel like I’m carrying it forward.
Not as something unfinished…
But as something still speaking.
Still shaping.
Still reminding me that even in the middle of everything the noise, the movement, the plans, the next steps
God was there.
Not just at the end.
Not just in the resolution.
But in the middle of it.
Even when I couldn’t fully see it.
Even when I was still trying to understand it.
Even when I was writing from within it.
And maybe that’s what this moment has been about.
Not just remembering…
But recognising.
That what felt like chaos at the time
was not without purpose.
That what felt like confusion
was not without presence.
And that even now
as life keeps moving forward
those moments are not wasted.
They are still speaking.
Still forming something.
Still pointing back to the same truth:
The Lord was in it.
And He still is.
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