Four years ago a friend in publishing suggested I start a blog (well. Five years ago. Took me awhile to come around). I initially looked at her like she’d suddenly sprouted horns.
I mean, who has that much to say? (Especially publically? Isn’t that like running naked through cyberspace, waving a flag?)
When I found it was suggested that bloggers post two or three times a week, I nearly threw in the towel. I was like, I have a job. Seriously: I was intimidated. I’m not a pastor or a columnist used to churning out some sage wisdom. Even then, none of us is on all the time. (And it’s possible one of my kids had just pooped on the floor?) I was afraid of pulling posts out of thin air for some imaginary deadlines, and wasting both of our time.
It was around then I decided I wouldn’t post if I didn’t feel I truly had something to say.
What Changes When You See
It’s been a little surprising on that front, maybe like being a young mom. Just when you think you absolutely. Cannot. Get Out. Of bed and help one more person in the middle of the night, someone cries. (Or poops.) And there you are, popping up like toast.
In a (much) better way than that, the discipline itself of looking for God and studying relationships has caused me to “see the world in blog”, as a friend puts it. But not just for other people. It’s now a devotional experience magnetizing elements of my world, pulling my life into cohesive thoughts. I am awakened, observing more acutely the themes of what God’s doing; the stories he’s writing around me.
Maybe it’s like those people who catch wild yeast in their backyards (I kid you not). You’d be surprised what lives in the air around you.
Long Days
But then, there are weeks like this one.
I will have to be careful now to type without letting myself getting complain-y. (Elisabeth Elliot wrote wisely, Refuse self pity. Refuse it absolutely.)
Husband is traveling, kids are sick, work is wonderfully busy. There’s been a medical issue. There was a memorial service last Saturday was for my two-year-old friend. My kids are arguing like–I don’t know. Some atrocious metaphor involving screaming cats. And those are just the highlights. So many times when I sat down to pray and think, someone called, or something happened. Or nothing happened, and I stared out the window. A couple of nights found me grappling with anxiety, which is atypical for me.
So when I couldn’t get to sleep after a coughing child at 4:30 this morning, I now sit here with a blinking cursor, a couple of tissues, and a zinc lozenge, having sloshed tea on my lap. (Bonus: This morning I get a headstart on Mt. Laundry.) I process two conversations I had with two different weepy teenagers sitting on my bed last night. I am listening keenly past the chorus of snoring to hear if another child will stop coughing, which is starting to sound like barking. (Seriously. The plague is real.) I have already fantasized about going crazy with Clorox wipes and a vaporizer later today.
Then I folded open my e-reader. Paul David Tripp reminded me God “is just as faithful to all of his promises on your very worst day as he is on your very best day.”*
Like manna, he keeps showing up. Even when I have nothing to say, can hardly feel, his hands are never empty.
I’m the sick child he holds, the maudlin teen he listens to and cries with, the schoolgirl who can count on her lunch ready in a bag when she walks out the door.
So I thought, maybe there’s a post after all in here somewhere. After all, the same person who advised me to post 2-3 times a week also said to blog on something you could write on forever. I was stumped by that at first. My thoughts after a few good runs, I knew, would shrivel up into prunes.
But God? New mercies, new faithfulness, there in the air around me. Even on weeks when survival is my primary goal. For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
*From New Morning Mercies: A Daily Gospel Devotional. Crossway: Wheaton, IL (2014), 5 September. Kindle Edition.
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A Symphony around My Chopsticks: Thoughts on Everyday Faithfulness
