We had been warned.  Our siblings and many of our parents had sat at the feet of Miss Smith and Miss Tracey before us.  We knew the legend of the dynamic duo of written communication, so we already both feared and trusted them, and we knew that we would learn.  Sweet goodness, would we learn.

We met Miss Smith sophomore year of high school.  We all left our 5th period classes early to make sure we weren’t late.  Late was not an option.  Each time the door opened, another of our classmates would leave the casual chatter of the hallway behind them and enter into the deafening tension of the room.  There we sat in silence–waiting, motionless, sweating profusely–until the bell rang.  A squeaky pair of orthopedic shoes broke the quiet when Miss Smith emerged from her office–somewhat confused, but certainly not unamused, by our obvious terror.  Over the course of the next year, she taught us the commandments that the Modern Language Association had inscribed into the sixth edition of its handbook.  We kept a record of our own wrongs against it in a coded portfolio, onto which we documented how many times we committed each of the 27 possible grammatical fallacies in the papers we submitted.  “7s,” for example, were comma errors, and they were generally forgivable mistakes.  “2a, 2b, and 2c” were fragment, run on, and comma splice.  They were, in all circumstances, blasphemous and would negatively affect the lives of you, your children, and your children’s children.  “13” meant “awkward wording,” and you might commit this one, for instance, if you loved adjectives and adverbs SO MUCH that you tried to superfluously cram all of them into every sentence (I’m not sorry.)  Spelling always counted.  Sentence diagrams were either perfect or wrong.  No paper was ever spared the judgement of red ink.  However, Miss Smith was fair.  We were all imperfect, but we all understood exactly why.

Towards the end of the year, Miss Smith stood before our class and apologized.  She said that she had misplaced our essays on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self Reliance” that we had been writing for several weeks, and so our grades would be postponed.  Our collective terror had loosened a bit over the course of the year, so we responded enthusiastically. “Don’t even worry about it,” we laughed, “why don’t you just give us all 90%, and we’ll call it even.”  She paused with a knowing smile until our laughter subsided. Her response was simple and profound:

“You wouldn’t want that.”  

Then, there was silence.  We were given an unspeakably empowering moment to reflect and discover that she was right.  We wouldn’t, in fact, want that.  The articulation of our thoughts was flawed, and those flaws had consequences.  That had been made abundantly clear.  Even so, the thoughts themselves were significant.  They were worth exploring, worth documenting, and worth reading.  We feared Miss Smith.  We feared her rightness, her thoroughness, her honesty, and her judgement.  While it felt safer to hide from her behind the mediocrity of a passive A-, in that moment we realized that our fear of failure had been overthrown by the desire to be heard and the desire to improve. Our fear of Miss Smith had not lessened, but we knew she would hear us, and we knew she would make us better.  With that, we became high school juniors.

If you are familiar with the character of Edna Mode in Disney’s “The Incredibles,” then you have a fairly accurate representation of Miss Tracey’s excellence, eccentricity, and haircut.  In her equally intimidating charge, we began to dabble in writing style–sentence length, structure, punctuation, and the sort.  I relished the flowery images that Jane Austen could paint with her many lovely words.  Miss Tracey preferred Hemmingway’s brevity.  Nevertheless, she taught both authors with equal respect for their voices.  We continued to track the pesky but downtrending numbers of “7s” and “13s” we produced, and by this point, none of us had been branded by any sort of “2” in many months.  Miss Tracey assigned us a short story writing project.  She explained the paper’s topic, expected length, and required features.  She then made this announcement: “If you can convince me that you did it on purpose and with good reason, you may now break the rules.”  For instance, if it was the most effective way to communicate our point, we now had permission to knowingly submit fragments to Miss Tracey.  Fragments!  “2a,” the chiefest of all literary sins, was not only forgivable now, but…sometimes the best option?  What freedom!  What opportunity!

To this day, that short story is my favorite thing I have ever written.  It was the immediate result of burdens being lifted, and I used that freedom to create something that was creative, articulate, and heartfelt.  The rules were no less important now, of course.  I could never have communicated my point if I hadn’t first learned them.  But the rules were no longer the point itself.  They were tools–habits that I needed to master to give substance to my voice.  My grammar had not been destroyed, but rather freed to focus on its purpose.  The idea that our English department sought to develop was never merely “how” we write, but rather, “why” we write at all.  By the end of senior year, you could line up “A” papers on the same topic from ten of my classmates, and I could tell you who wrote each one.  The grammar was uniformly good, but the voices–articulate, clear, and insightful–were distinct and uniquely worth reading.

One of the most difficult concepts in Christianity for me is the difference between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament.  They seem so different.  Old Testament God seems to focus on law and consequence, where Jesus preaches freedom and purpose and grace.  I cannot claim to wrap my head around the wisdom and movements of God.  However, thanks to my high school English department, I can understand the importance of rules and the joy of freedom, and I can understand how they must be gifted in that order.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, obeying the law will cause me to do the most right.  But what about the other time?  And anyway, in a system where “spelling always counts,” I am paralyzed and condemned by the running portfolio of my faults.  Why would I act?  Why would I speak?  What if I am wrong? Instead of trying and failing and facing the judgement of an untouchably holy God, wouldn’t it be safer to be passively mediocre and try to hide from Him?  

“You wouldn’t want that.”   

Enter Jesus.  He hears, and He helps.  He pours His blood over the portfolio.  It covers the red ink, and no marks will ever show up again.  The tally system is gone.  He frees us from the paralyzing rules by defining their purpose, and He gives them back to us as tools.  There is no “2a,” there is no “13,” there is only the prompt to love God and love people.  You’re free.  You have a voice.  Now, write your story.