Any writer or blogger will admit to anyone that there is a
whole mess of unedited writing somewhere that they have written in some moment
of acute revelation that will never be seen by another human eye. If I’m honest, I have these short blurbs of
self-disclosure all over the place. I have notes on my phone that I’ve dictated
while sitting at a stop light, accent errors and all. I have fully written
blogs that were heart felt in the moment and expressed quite eloquently but
read back later sounded “preachy” or irrelevant. I have like 7 journals so that
if I need to take notes or remember something, I can write it down. It’s
nothing short of a cluster. No one will ever see any of it, and I’m ok with
that.
I’ve been relatively silent on this particular venue because
there’s an audience…be it, rather small. Words are incredibly important, and
when you put them on the internet, they can be etched in digital stone whether
I know it or not. So I contemplate much more deeply whether or not something
should be published here. Foolishness spreads much quicker than wisdom with
social media, which I think we all know. I’ve also been silent because I have
felt a particular nudging from the Lord to write transparently and honsetly
about Him…To use this as a semi-public platform to discuss and praise Him.
That’s not necessarily what I had in mind when I created the
domain. I kinda wanted this to be a light-hearted space just for me. Gee that sounded selfish. A space to
discuss recipes and natural skin care and coffee shops and crafts…things that
are a little less weighty. But I’ve recently felt as if that’s really not what
God is calling me to. It’s to the point that anytime I sit down to write
something, I can’t think of anything besides what He is teaching me on my faith
journey. I wrote an entire blog post about Leah, Jacob’s wife in Genesis,
because my heart just broke for her as I read her story for the 100th
time. And I was drawn into her person and I saw her through God’s eyes as she
lived her entire life with a husband who chose someone else over her. But I
didn’t publish it because…I don’t want to sound preachy. I don’t want to be
that crazy person who can’t talk about anything else. Who wants to read about
Leah?
I’m writing today because I read something that maybe has
changed everything for me. “It’s important to keep our relationships with God
personal, but not private”. (From She Reads Truth Lent study) Personal, but not
private. What if the authors of the Bible (Moses, Jeremiah, Luke, Paul,
Timothy, etc) didn’t want to “sound too preachy”? What if the people who told
the stories about the Exodus from Egypt, or David and Goliath, or Daniel with
the Lions never wrote it down and shared it? Those parts of God’s redemption
story…they might not be known by us today. It wouldn’t make God any less
powerful, but we would just not have those stories to point to and praise Him
for things he has done. “God has scripted an enormous and lovingly elaborate
story of love and provision for his people.” (SRT) Read that quote one more
time…it’s exciting. He has done great things and performed marvelous rescues of
his people from the beginning of time.
I love thinking about God as our great rescuer and about my relationship
with Him as a love story. It totally and completely satiates my desire for the
Disney fairytale that I heard and dreamed about as a child. We are part of a
great love story…no matter who we are….single, married, divorced, widowed, old,
young, male, female. All of us. We are (present tense) all the object of God’s
affections and desires, so much that we don’t have to daydream about becoming a
Disney princess or watch a romantic comedy to experience it.
Why is it important to make our relationships with our
creator and sustainer personal but not private? For those times that life is
hard. God has an incredible track record of remaining faithful to His people
throughout generations in all circumstances. He will not turn his back on us.
He will pursue us and mold us and be faithful to us. When life gets hard, (because
it does) we need to be able to look back and remember that God is faithful. He
has carried each of us through and has done so for thousands of years. In order
for us to reference that…stories have to be shared.
So I’m just rolling with this. It’s not really what I had in
mind, but it’s the topic that I continue to want to write about. And it’s
alright if a lot of things that I write are never seen by anyone else. And it’s
ok if people would rather read light-hearted, humor-filled blogs instead of
this. I am definitely that person sometimes. But I don’t know if I have much to
contribute to that genre of writing. We’ll see how this goes…please don’t
expect professionalism, or wisdom or clever puns but definitely transparency
and obedience. And yes, still some of my favorite “reality food” recipes.
