All Is Grace

have you ever noticed that when you sit down to write something which will eventually receive a) a grade or b)a potential critique…you write more intently and more intentionally than you would if you were sitting down to write yourself a note?

think back to college. high school, even. you write yourself a note–something you need to remember–and it’s scribbled illegibly in abbreviations and shorthand, and as to-the-point as possible. you know what you wrote and why you wrote it (usually), and that’s good enough. but if you’re going to write a note to pass to a friend in class…that gets a little more thought. someone else’s eyes will read it. potentially, the teacher could catch you passing it and someone else’s eyes could read it. you are careful about word choice, specific with punctuation…more thoughtful about the point you’re getting across.

i journaled for years. years and years and years. in various forms. notebooks. word documents. evernote. all over the place. i love that i wrote down what was going through my head, and in a way that i didn’t ever plan to go back and edit. i will hold on to those until i’m brave enough to let my daughters open them and read them themselves. but here’s the thing about journaling: i was the only one who would read what i wrote. even when i was 17 and headed to college, when i was 25 and expecting my first child, when i was 29 and fighting through a hopeless marriage, when i was 37 and lonely again, i was the only one reading it. i didn’t have to think through the thoughts i penned…i just had to pen them. i love the whole stream-of-consciousness writing process (and wholeheartedly blame Mrs. Davis in grade 5 or 6 for encouraging it in me 🙂 ), but sometimes…it’s a little empty. a bit one-sided. not well thought-out. and you don’t really get far with it. if you never read back through it–or don’t for a very long time, anyway–you never solve the crisis you were smack in the middle of on January 4. or at least you don’t solve it on paper. it probably had resolution…but it may or may not have been recorded.

blogging is a very different animal.

i’m getting into this here because i heard someone make a comment the other day about all of the whining, sad, depressive blogs written by Christ-followers that may talk about Jesus, but certainly don’t focus on the “wins.” (this is a serious paraphrase, mind you). and i felt…hmm. convicted? called out? i don’t know what. and as i thought through my friend’s words…i found that, no…i didn’t actually feel convicted. i felt angry. because see…

…i don’t write this blog for you.

i don’t write this blog for the people i know. i don’t write it for the strangers who wind up here on a random google search or following a pin of a burlap wreath. i don’t write it for my homescholing friends considering unschooling. i don’t write it for fellow women who are walking through divorce and single parenting or the dynamics of a step-family.

i don’t write this blog for anyone else.

i write it for me.

now i feel like i need to qualify that a little bit. because, you see, i have spent hours reading the blogs of women like myself, and women very unlike myself, and dads who are married to women like myself, and people who are nothing like me. i’ve pored over their rantings and ravings. and i have gleaned from their knowledge and insight. sometimes i have shaken my head at what i would consider their mistakes. and read along as they learned from them. or didn’t. i have learned. by experiencing other people’s joy and pain and triumphs and tragedies…i have shared in their joys…and their sufferings. i have learned so much about my own struggle through theirs. there have been times where my friends have screamed out to a God they can’t feel. i’ve read entries where strangers have found him. i have read posts by people who have no God…but still have something to teach. or even just something to ponder. of course there are blogs i just can’t read because…well, they’re not my style. or i can’t get behind the decisions they continually make…loudly in their blog…or in their lives. i’m not sitting here telling you that every blog is worth following…i’m not trying to tell you that mine is worth following…but why did i feel, after reading those words, that if I can’t proclaim Jesus’s greatness boldly in every post of my blog…my blog is less?

when i blog my thoughts, it is more than memory-keeping. it’s more than thinking out loud (though I do that a lot). because i know it could, potentially, be seen by other eyes, i choose my words more carefully.  i also really think them through–most posts take at least all day to think it through…often more. i don’t start a blog post, necessarily, knowing where it’s going, but in writing one, i want to go from point A to point B and actually get somewhere. i used to think throughout the day in facebook status updates…silly quips, things the kids were doing…now i think in blog posts. i do some of my best thoughtful pondering here and as i go throughout my day. i blogged our unschooling beginnings because it took my jumbled thoughts and made sense of them for me. i organized them as i edited…and the thought process actually went somewhere over the couple of weeks i blogged seriously about it. and people read it. and responded. here and in real life and in text messages and facebook chats. i LOVED that interaction and those conversations. i love it when people think with me.

but i don’t write here only to boast of my great God. though i will certainly do that. i write here to think and to work through my thoughts and to ponder more deeply than i would in my head. i don’t write here for people to notice what i’m writing. if that happens and i get to think with people later…then i am DOUBLY blessed. i truly, earnestly believe that God has allowed every situation in my life–from the darkest depths to the most glorious heights–to use somehow for his purposes. if that means i get to reach into someone’s life and help them think a little bit about whatever it is i’m writing…so be it.

and if my blog doesn’t do it for you…well…

…i’m not writing it for you anyway.

i think God would be ok with that.