I’m trying to get back in the habit of writing (and blogging) as a Lenten practice. I’ve slacked WAY off on my blogging. Partly it’s because I can’t always share what I’m learning since my job requires 100% confidentiality.

(I mean, if I sat with you as your family member died, would you like me to go blabbing about it? I didn’t think so…)

SO I face a dilemma. I’m pondering all kinds of things that I can’t put on paper. Yet I need to blog to keep perspective, and just maybe learn a little.

My life is messy. My heart is messy. My reactions to the things I see and experience are way messy. And people tend to misinterpret what I write about and that affects my emotions and self esteem which are messy¹⁰!! And that makes it hard to look in the mirror.

Yet… when I reflect and find a way to write about them, I can see my way through them.

Fellow blogger and person-I’ve-met-in-real-life, Esther Emery issued a challenge about blogging. It rang a chord in my soul. She wrote:

I am not the one to tell you what the future holds. There is always shift and pull. But I will go on record saying this. The phenomenon of blogging, in which ordinary people write out their lives in messy forms in malleable spaces, is something true and something precious. Somewhere in there, even amid self-obsession and exhaustion and navel-gazing, is a chance to accidentally pay attention and accidentally become engaged and be a part of something that is true and alive. I don’t want you to give up on that.

Yeah. That’s it. That’s EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking.

So here’s to mudpies and muddy jeans and the occasionally splat-on-my-face moments of blogging… because life is full of muck. And I step in it a lot. But even in the messy, there’s beauty, and amazement, and learning about the ways that God can redeem any situation or person.

Including me. Especially me.

Thanks be to God.