Why I Am Starting This Blog.

"Why don't you start your own blog?" Wally asked me form across the kitchen.

We were prepping dinner. I had checked my email while double checking the recipe on Pinterest and found the email. It was sent to each of the 5 contributors of a blog that I had been posting on for about the last 10 years. The email told us that we were to stop posting and that, in time, the organizers wanted to revamp and relaunch the site to support pastors' wives.

It seemed simple to my husband. Just begin my own.

Honestly, it was something that I had prayed earnestly about a year or so ago. I had sought the counsel of trusted friends and confided the dangerous temptation I knew I would face. The idea of followers, "likers" and commenters can be very enticing fuel for my pride and super-sensitive ego.

Over a year ago, I had also shared with my friends and husband that I had felt that if I were to start a blog, I would need to know my audience, who I was writing to. With the other blog I had been a part of, our audience was clear. We were writing to support women married to ministry guys.

At that time, last year-ish, the answer God seemed to give me was "wait." It wasn't the right timing to start my own blog. My motivation wasn't in the right place. My purpose in writing wasn't clear. God wasn't seeming to say, "no," just "not right now."

In the time that has passed, I have grown and changed spiritually. I am thankfully not the same person  I was a year ago. My "present tense" is not where I was then. My children are a year older. Things are better organized at work. I have said "no, thank you" to one ministry opportunity. And God has answered my prayers to use the gifts He has given me in unexpected but very fulfilling ways.

Then, I had read Jennie Allen's "Restless" and was itching to "do" for God things I had felt He had made me to do. Yet, the doing then was a call to "wait." In the meantime, I continued to read His Word and pray, trying to take each day and be obedient to God within it. Holding my hands open so He could take and tweak what I already had for His purposes AND so I could receive what He wanted to give me.

Now, with the ending of the other blog, with that chapter closing - the timing seems right...

• From friends who did not know about the other blog ending and my recent prayers I have had encouragement to keep writing. 

• God has been giving me topics for posts I had been saving for the other forum, but as I look over my running list, I realize that they are not topics exclusive for ministers' wives. (Truth be told, if you've read my other posts on the old blog, VERY few of those postings would have been exclusive for its target audience.) 

• This week it seems the Holy Spirit has nudged me into accepting that my fear of falling into the sins my blogging could lead to, is not a reason for me to be disobedient to what God may be calling me to do. 

So.......

Who would I write for now? What would by purpose in writing a blog be? Why would I write and post it publicly? (These are all questions my college professors would expect me to be able to answer before I begin to write.)

First, I feel I am being obedient to what God has called me for today. Even as I type this morning, I had the time in the middle of a busy week to sit at my dining room table and peck out these thoughts. Our lives are busy. I didn't realize I would have this window. I do realize that these moments are a God-given gift.

Writing this way helps me to process what God is teaching me. I am far from a prefect Christian. The longer I walk with Christ, the more aware I am of the far distances I have yet to go. Organizing my thoughts and sharing the insights God has given me into His Word, is all a part of my personal spiritual growth. I want more than anything for this place to be one of transparency for me so that whoever may be reading these words would find me relatable and real. I do not have "it" altogether - no matter what "it" might be. I have spent quite a bit of time and prayer seeking forgiveness just this morning from a friend that I had wronged.

I am definitely not an authority on parenting, marriage, managing a preschool, teaching Sunday school classes - but I am actively trying to be intentional to seek God and apply His truth to my life. My circumstances and situations will change. Yet, my prayer is that this will always be my "present tense."

With the idea, that I might encourage or find community for others in a similar "present tense," I am starting this blog. My audience? Maybe I can't clearly define that right now. But I really believe that God will draw those He wills to read it.

If no one reads it? - I am okay with that too as I see myself as my own audience. I am not writing this "for" anyone specific, other than "for" myself as I figure out my "present tense." I am starting this blog because I understand it what God is leading me to do.

If you have read this and would like me to consider you as a part of the "audience," please use the comments to introduce yourself to me and anyone else whom God might bring to follow this blog.