Archives for June 2014

I’ve been at this blog thing for quite a long time. What started as way to write, years later has turned into something far greater than I ever expected. And I don’t mean that in terms of page views, readers, or even SEO. You see, I simply wanted to write. I’ve always felt and said that in order to breathe, to think, to be…I just needed to write. Writing was my exhale.

And for years I’d found comfort in the pages of my journals, processing through my parents divorce, rape, death, broken friendships, broken dreams, heartbreaking decisions and painful relationships…as well as celebrating the joys, the lessons, the wisdom and the strength that stood out through it all. Allowing my pen to spill the stories, the feelings, and the memories, gave words to so much that I found I was never able to speak out loud.

Inside it was just a hurricane of emotions, but on paper, it would suddenly make sense. And only once that it was written, was I able to find the courage and the words to speak.

Starting my blog… It was because I deeply longed to write and have it be…less lonely, I suppose. I never had expectations of how many readers, or comments, or page views, or even had any comprehension of SEO or Google Page Ranking. I simply wanted to share publicly the echos of my journals in hopes that maybe there were others who connected and needed to feel less alone in it as well.

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And as things happen over time, things changed.
Blogs changed.
Blogging changed.
And I changed.

I looked around and quickly noticed I wasn’t enough.
I compared…too much, and then suddenly I found myself joining the race and dancing the dance. I tried to put on the costume and act the part, doing all that I felt I was supposed to. I attempted to look like everyone else, all the while longing for the simplicity of what it had all begun as for me.

Still though, I shared my life, joys and struggles…but as I’d close the laptop each time, I noticed that I was feeling even lonelier than before the blog had ever begun. Writing was no longer what it once had been to me…and it no longer soothed me the way I had always known and needed.

I was trying to play by the rules and keep up, and it simply wasn’t working for me. Here I was totally exposed yet incredibly alone, and I found myself beginning to resent writing for causing such a struggle.

It was when an opportunity to submit a book proposal to an agent who had hope for me and my ideas, a lifelong dream of mine, seemed to stop me in my tracks. My excitement was quickly replaced with feeling paralyzed by the task of having to include my reach, my numbers and ultimately what felt so much like my “worth.”

I compared, I fell short, and in that, I lost my ability to write.

Ironically, it took until this last writing sabbatical, weeks of not writing…for me to find the truth in all this. To find the reason behind my resistance. It’s as though God stepped in and put a firm halt to the dog and pony show and said, “Stop this. This isn’t who I created you to be. This isn’t what I’ve asked you to do. You are not them. You are you, the you I created with my own hands just I needed you to be, and just because it maybe doesn’t look like what the rest of them are doing, doesn’t make what I have for you wrong. It doesn’t make you not enough. You are enough. My plan is enough. Trust me.”

“They” say to know my page views, and not only know it, but strive for more. I should create titles and topics and keywords that have something to do with SEO, and then promote and get others to promote so that page rank or something like that gets me further up the blogging chain. Clickable links, pinnable pictures, weekly memes, link ups, not too much of this, but just enough of that…

I’m not trying in any way to say all of that is wrong. It works for SO many. It helps to get your message out. And that can be amazing, especially when ultimately the message is about Him. (the Lord)

But I now understand and fully embrace that it is not all about that for me.
Before anything, I simply come to write.

And so from this moment on, whether it makes sense or not, or follows successful blogging protocol or not…simply writing is what I must get back to doing.

All the rest I joyfully place in God’s ever so capable hands, right where it belonged from the beginning. I’m learning how to write again…

I’m learning to write again…

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