Why Bother With a Blog
As I've gotten deeper and deeper into the blogging community, I've found so many incredible people who write amazing words that are funny, inspirational and have great hair. I've filled my newsfeed with their updates, photos and posts. This was all super inspirational for about three weeks...and then I started having some serious self doubt.
There are over 150 million blogs on the internet with thousands being added every single day. Every topic I've jotted in my notebook as a "to write about someday" idea has already been written about, probably hundreds of thousands of times. There are blogs for every topic, genre, idea, and category imaginable. You get the point. This age of technology and social media has made it easier than ever to compare ourselves to everyone else.
This past 4th of July I posted an adorable picture of Zac, Finn and I on our deck with Finn wearing his homemade red, white and blue t-shirt. It got a lot of likes. Guess how many attempts it took to capture that moment. THIRTY. Yes, thirty photos had to be taken in that same exact same pose to get one where Finn was holding still, somewhat smiling, and neither Zac or I blinked, moved, looked the wrong way or opened our mouths to yell at the dog for walking the railing like a tightrope. We took thirty pictures that afternoon, but you saw the single one that turned out.
There are hundreds of thousands of blogs out there about faith, family, balance, money, finances, oils, motherhood, parenthood, lack of sleep, working in the home, working outside of the home, marriage and everything else. Maybe I should have started a blog eight years ago when I first had the idea, but it would have been pretty tough to transition from a blog about bartending and shot recipes to faith, family, and marriage...So I'm celebrating being blog number 177,898,847 (that's a guess, it's probably higher).
I started this blog because God has brought us through some pretty incredible things these past three years and we believe we are being asked to share this story. This story that is about being enough. About embracing the seasons as they come and being obedient to the One who created us. It's about grace and freedom and surrender. There is such freedom in owning our fears. Yes, I am afraid that these topics are anything but rare, but now I've told you. Here's to posting the first picture, not the thirtieth, writing about ideas that inspire us even if they've been written about before, owning our fears of failure and using the internet to encourage someone who might really need it rather than using it as a comparison-mobile.
"But He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."
2 Corinthians 12:9