Welcome

A while back I started a blog. I used to blog a lot in high school and college, before it got cool, and I loved it. When I became a mom I tried to keep it up and I just couldn't. So a while back I got inspired and decided on a whim that I was going to challenge myself to blog a reflection on the Psalms. Every. Single. One. I was super excited to have a goal, because I really needed one. Until about two weeks in when I realized just how much that challenge was not going to fit into my life right now.
I was embarrassed, and frustrated, because my desire to DO something, to be sharing what I felt I had to share with the world, just seemed impossible.
I felt like a passionate person without a passion. A creative, without an outlet. "Just" a mom. Not a mom with a blog, or an etsy shop, or a ministry, or even a plan. "Just a mom."

This is something I've thought about a lot since becoming a parent. My identity seemed to get all sucked up in mommyhood, and I've had pretty regular identity crises since that moment five years ago when my first kid arrived on the scene. I've birthed three kids, followed my husband in his ministry, and his job changes, bopped along feeling inadequate, and lost and every once in a while breaking out in a cold sweat, wondering if this was how things were going to be from now on.

I've been pining for the person that I used to be. Or at least the person I thought that I was. But God has changed me. I'm not that person anymore. And I'm not called to do the things that other people are doing. I'm not even being called to do the things I desire to do. At least not now. Right now I'm being called to just do the next thing. "Love well the person right in front of me." To "Wash the plate, not because it is dirty, not because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next." Do the laundry. Be a friend. Be a wife. Do the mom thing, and do it joyfully. Rejoice in the successes of others, the things they are doing to build the kingdom, but not feel inadequate for not adding to that effort in the same way.

I am an introvert. A big one. But since becoming a mom, I've branched out a lot. I share shamelessly (well...almost) about my failures big and small on social media, and reach out to people, and take risks, because I am hoping to reach just one person. To be an encouragement to someone who is lonely, in the trenches, someone who needs a friend. To love my neighbor.

So this is my new blog, where I am just me. Where I'm not trying to meet an impossible goal, but just share the things that are on my heart, and hope that one person can feel encouraged. Where I will probably regularly quote St. Mother Theresa, because she's my girl. Where I will write about, and sometimes bemoan, the way that God is shaping the person that I am now, by asking me to walk through the sometimes mundane moments of my life as a wife and mother. Where I wash the plate, because it needs washing, and give the hug, change the diaper, and...you get the idea. Because it needs doing. And because its teaching me how to love.

I hope that you, whoever you are, can be encouraged, can maybe feel a little less alone.