Most of the time, I let my on-again off-again style go unexplained. (My blogs tend to be wordy enough as it is!) But in favor of transparency, I wanted to tell you why this time.
Sometimes I don't write because I'm busy, and as a mom, I often let my hobbies take the backseat. (I know so many of you can relate!)
Sometimes I don't write because I'm interrupted. For me, blogging requires a couple hours of quality quiet time, and I'm pretty sure that "hours" and "quiet" are rare and magical unicorns that exist somewhere hard to reach and that they almost never hang out together.
Sometimes I don't write because I'm uninspired. I have a lot of thoughts--and let's face it--they can't all be winners. (I apologize for writing two entire blogs about my dirty floors, though I can't promise not to do it again--There's good stuff in dirt, people!)
This time, though, I didn't write because I was tired. I was tired of all the noise on the Internet, and I was tired of adding my voice to the jumble of all the others. The thought of putting one more opinion out there for people to filter through overwhelmed me and shut me down.
Aren't you tired of processing all of the voices? There are so many of them. Mad and angry. Sad and depressed. Scared and worried. Blaming and finger-pointing. Expert and all-knowing. Sentimental and sappy. Egoistic. Altruistic.
And yet, I have been all of those things!! I have made all of those same sounds.
This realization, then, gave me a HUGE feeling of inadequacy. Who was I to sell people my thoughts as if I was enlightened or had everything all figured out?! I promise you, I am one of the craziest people I know and oftentimes, the biggest emotional mess. I get through life because of a merciful God, a significant amount of hand-holding from the sweet people in my life, and fair amount of humor.
...And coffee... And sometimes also wine.
When I write, I write with the intent to encourage others and never with the intention of proving that I have things all figured out. I confess, it may have started out that way in the "early years," but I am over that now. Few should be teachers, and I certainly shouldn't be one.
But I love Jesus. And I love being a mom. I love being married to my service member. I love looking for the bigger picture inside of the seemingly small moments. I love cheering people up, making people laugh, and showing that there is always hope (even for us crazy people.)
And, I just happen to love to write.
In fact, I have become much more motivated lately to make my writing and this blog a "thing." And while I'm still not sure exactly what this means yet myself, I do know that I wanted to tell you that here.
For a long time I didn't want to do this because I didn't think I was good enough.
Then, I didn't want to do it because I thought there was no longer a market for it. Really and truly, how many more "feel-good bloggers" do we need? There are lots of people out there like me, I know, with the same visions to make the same kinds of sounds.
I was convicted when I read something from Jennie Allen's book, Nothing to Prove:
Maybe you have a God-given dream, and you look around you and you see other people doing something similar and that shuts you down. You will get to see God work crazy miracles out of your life if you stop looking side to side and instead consider the good things that are right in front of you. But we look side to side and say, "Someone is already doing it; my dream is taken."
I realized that those other people might want to make my same sounds, but God sent them to make them in other places. I was meant to make them in mine.
You see, there is one God with many children.
One story with many story-tellers.
Many, many, many seeds. One vine.
...One dirty floor. Many, many more stories about mopping. (Just kidding. Probably.)
Thank you to the sweet people who have encouraged me in ways big and small. It is my honest prayer to be able to give such encouragement back to you. And thank you for listening to my noise, as I am pretty sure that's all it was today.
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
