How long, now?!

2 years? Wow.
I don't usually stick with much of anything, that long. But today marks this blogs "birthday"--two years now of scratching out my rough thoughts and posting blurry photos. Thank you to each of you who have encouraged (and even threatened) me to keep on writing. The little blog counter insists that over 20 people read this silly thing each day, and I am both stunned and grateful. I read a quote online that said "all bloggers are egotists." and I laughed out loud. I agree! Though the facts remain that we all, whether we blog or not, are egotists with our innate self-focus. But it's a fact that blogging is certainly putting yourself "out there" in a more direct and very public way. A good friend and I were talking about this recently and after insisting my blog was different (haha! but thanks, K!) she asked "why do people assume what they have to say is so important others will care to read it?" and it's a great question. I can't answer for everyone else, but here are my reasons:

1. It's just writing practice. I may never get a book published, but I feel the urge to tap out sentences. It's a form of creative expression, and words feel bottled up inside me when I don't write. I assume this is how musicians must feel, why their fingers tap on restaurant counters and why they hum little melodies to themselves. It doesn't always have to be good, but it does have to be released. I love this quote by Madeleine L Engle:

"Why does anybody tell a story?
It does indeed have something to do with faith,
faith that the universe has meaning,
that our little human lives are not irrelevant,
that what we choose to do or say matters, matters cosmically."

2. To try and capture the days. They go by so fast. It seems that I put my babies to bed at night and they are half grown men by the morning. It's for John and I, to go back and remember. These boys are so precious to me, and I know that their memories of childhood will be blurry around the edges. I want to capture it for them, too. This blog is like a notebook I can't lose-a place to scribble down the innocence and joy that is presently theirs, so that on some harsh and too-bright-grown-up day in the future they can stop the rushing. They can reach up, take down this record from the shelf and linger on those pages for comfort, and for reminder.

3. To testify of God's faithfulness. He's good, all the time and not enough people know it!
"I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
My soul shall make it's boast in the Lord, the humble shall hear it and rejoice.
O magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.
For I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears."
Psalm 34:1-4

4. To help maintain relationships. If no one read this blog, I would still write it, because of the reasons above. But the comments, the emails, the conversation with a casual acquaintance who suddenly says "Oh, and I've been reading your blog and had a question..." are totally the frosting on the cake! Aren't relationships surprisingly fragile? Is it just me, or does it sometimes feel like you can barely keep up with the daily happenings in family/friends lives? A blog is my way of saying "this is where we are at-Rejoice with us! or Pray with us! or Laugh with us! okay, then just laugh at us! but it's ALL good.

5. To stretch myself. It's not easy for a people-pleaser to blog. Truly, some of my posts feel so vulnerable and exposing that the minute I hit "Publish Post" I get an immediate stomachache full of regret. But I BELIEVE that it is truth which sets us free-both those who speak it and those who hear it.

"Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity...
that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally.
If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished
not only humanly but spiritually.... In these pages I tell secrets...because that is one way of keeping track and because I believe that it is not only more honest but also vastly more interesting than to pretend that I have no such secrets to tell.
I not only have my secrets, I am my secrets. And you are your secrets.
Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human."
~Beuchner, Telling Secrets

6. To share...Whatever! To be generous with ideas, with a tried and true recipe, a new color scheme for the bathroom, book recommendations or our new school curriculum choices. It might be the Scripture that jumped out that morning, or the quote that made me think, and especially the funny things the boys say or do! My choices in blog posts come down to whatever I would tell or show a friend who came into our house, I post. And I figure that you are all big enough to choose among these meager offerings for what you can use, and leave the rest for others who come along.

So, thanks for reading.
and I'll keep tapping at this dusty keyboard,
for as long as the reasons above still matter.

in gratitude,
Brenda