The last blog post prior to this one was posted in June of 2014. After that, I gave up, and I wanted to tell you why.
I started a blog 5 years ago as a way of sharing my journey of my first go-through of the Bible. I committed to reading the entire Bible all the way through, after witnessing and exposure to Scripture that I had never been a part of at Passion 2011. I still remember where I was sitting, on the tiny Ikea couch that barely fit in my dorm room, and started typing away, sharing about my excitement for Scripture and my love for the Parables.
Over the years, I would write every month or so, every time I felt like God had something for me to share. Around that time, I was home on summer break and I woke up in the middle of the night and felt God say to me so clearly and almost audibly, that I was supposed to write… write what, I had no idea.
That lack of vision would lead to a confusing and uncertain time in my life. Looking back, I should have spent more time listening, and less time taking God’s ideas and making them my own.
The blog became something I despised, but needed at the same time. I started to write about myself. I wrote a series of posts about myself leading up to my 22nd birthday. I lived and died by the response from Facebook friends, the amount of likes or retweets. I became dependent on the affirmation that writing and posting provided me. Writing became a place of sin. Something that God had so tenderly spoken into being in my heart had become corrupted by my own need for affirmation and worth. I was taking to the Internet to talk about things that I hadn’t even taken to Jesus yet. I watched stats after every post, and felt raw and ugly every time I published something. But still, God had called me to it, so I did it. I had confused God’s vision for my life for something to give me a platform and attention.
Life did its normal thing, and took me away from writing. I graduated college, got a job, got a different job, moved, got engaged and got married, all between that last post in 2014 to June of 2015. In June of this year, my brand new husband asked me why I didn’t write anymore. And I knew. Because I had perverted what God gave me and I was afraid to return to it, in fear that it would be the same, wouldn’t feel the same. That I had ruined it some how. But I sat down, and listened. For the first time since I felt the urging to write, I listened. And the post following this one is what came out. Something raw and real flowed through my fingers, but I didn’t feel raw, I felt whole. I felt like I had fulfilled the mission God called me to, for that brief moment. So, my brother and I worked together to put my new name in your address bar, and give my new season a new look.
I can no longer be disobedient to the urgings and gentle, loud whispers of God in the night, through others, and in my heart. I can no longer refuse the gift he is offering. I can no longer by lazy and selfish and insolent. It is God’s vision for me that I should write, some to be published, and some that will not. I have committed to listen, to follow and to go where he leads my hands to type.
Some posts from the previous life of this blog will come along on the new journey, but some will stay lost in the depths of the World Wide Web, because they do not reflect the original vision for my writings.
So, welcome to Effloresce, and thanks for following along.