Silence

    

 I don't know where I got the idea that my silence was a good thing. But somehow over the formative young teen years, I developed the conviction that I had nothing to say that anyone would want to hear. Then I started a blog, and that blog led to writing articles for a Christian magazine.  My uncle once pulled my cousin and me aside and told us, "Don't ever stop writing. You have a gift, and you need to use it. We need to hear what you both have to say." 

    This lit the fire under me, and I wrote with a vengeance. Someone wanted to hear what I had to say. 

    Years passed, I got married, started a family, started a new blog.  I posted in that blog fairly often, as we hit change after change, and God kept placing things into my mind to get me thinking - and to process it, I would write another article. I was desperate for people in my life and church to understand where I was coming from. I was convinced that if they could just hear me, they would at least try to stop judging. 

    My husband and I faced a big cross country move. We were far from family and friends, hoping to be a blessing and help to a new church plant in a big northern city.  I wrote and posted at least once a year, though often more.  Things disintegrated in the church plant we helped with, and broken hearted - I wrote some more. I didn't post those things though. They were too raw. Too full of pain.  

    Five years after our big move, we moved again to a smaller city in the south.   We were reeling from the failure of our church plant and the demolition of our cultural Christian practices over the last eight years.  I wrote one more blog post, outlining our move from the city, and then when I tried to log into the blog several months later, I couldn't. The email address I had used for the blog was gone, deleted by the webhost apparently.  I tried password after password, and nothing worked. I couldn't reset my password because the email address no longer worked.  I was locked out of the blog that I had spent seven years building.  I was devastated. 

   

 I quit writing. Quit journaling. I believed I had nothing to say that would do anyone else any good.

    And then last night, I couldn't sleep, so I slapped up a quick post on Instagram, outlining a few paragraphs about the trip to California my husband I took in June.  I put my phone down and tried to sleep, but all I could see was the glorious beauty of California, and wonderful memories we had made in those seven days on vacation. 

    It hit me like a ton of bricks and my eyes popped open. I needed to write to process Joy. I had not felt euphoria or joy after I had returned home from vacation. I slipped into my job and took care of my house and kids. Vacation is amazing, but this is real life. I slogged along, head down, trudging through the motions, choosing to believe that I had nothing important to say. 

    But now. Here I begin a new chapter. A new blog. This one is for me. I'm not writing to convince anyone of anything. I'm writing to chronicle what I experience in life.  I've spent too much time trying to convince people that where I stand before God is valid.  

    Keep using the gifts God has given you, my friend. Someone, Somewhere, needs what you have to offer.