About Considering

This is a post in which I offer a few flimsy explanations. Starting off, blogging, as any form of writing I suppose, has proved to me to be an exploration of sorts. When I first began a few years back, I intended this to be a place mostly just for a few friends and family members who might be interested to peek in on the  goings on of my life and heart.

But it began evolving almost straight away. Divine{ish} appointments were kept and the loveliest bonds were forged. I grew up a teensy bit suspicious of internet relationships, so this was quite a feat, meeting and loving people I'd never met in the flesh. This year I even went so far as to meet one of these people in person, and I'm happy to announce I was not murdered in the process. The fact is, that relationship has bloomed into one of the most meaningful friendships my soul has ever experienced.

Who knew what wonderful things writing could accomplish? That it can and does weave hearts together and grows soul-friends? Beauty.

I did not remotely think blogging would do that.

In my second year of blogging, as I began branching out, I was very concerned about my readership and attracting new subscribers. I fretted over the font, the colors, whether my posts were too long or contained enough pictures. While this was certainly part of the learning process, I believe I lost a bit of my own unique voice in the mix.

Last year, I wrote seldom. I was tired. I even began to feel there was nothing I had to say that others were not already saying, and that I had nothing of importance to contribute. Last year was a hard year for me, in so many ways. I was a spiritual disaster. I tripped and fell in the mud and then sat there in the puddle and refused to get up. That's when God's rain fell, gently at first, then in torrential downpour, and washed every trace away, even as I shivered and shook  and felt cold deep into my bones. I became numb. I doubted I'd ever experience warmth again.

But the sun came out and shone down with such intensity, it thawed these cold bones. So I just sat there and soaked and absorbed and became saturated with new life, until the heat permeated every part of me.

And now, into my fourth year of blogging, it's as if I'm waking from deep slumber. I'm stretching my sleepy limbs in a gloriously slow extending motion, and getting on with it. Metamorphosis occurs in a cocoon, but emergence is a gorgeous thing to behold.

My wingspan is larger than I'd have imagined possible.

I'm ready to embrace the dance, friends. I'm ready to try on the garments that were made for me.  So I'm picking up my paints and my journals and my books. I'm creating art all around me, making music and beauty in little bits here and there, listening for the Voice and  responding with a swishing skirt, twirling into the joy. Reveling in the walk becoming a dance... Closing my eyes while living wide awake, holy paradoxes all around.

So this place? I have no idea what it'll become. It is much like a painting. I'm applying thick layers of paint in smooth strokes and waiting to see what comes alive. Maybe I'll write something every day, maybe I'll go weeks between posts. Maybe I'll make the font tiny or in every color of the rainbow. Perhaps I'll add a million pictures, or none at all. I have nothing and everything in mind. What I know for sure is that whatever shows up in this place will reflect my insides, all the way down to my guts.

What I know is 2014 will be real, authentic, lived with intention and explored with profound grace.

Join me?

amy