I have felt for some time now that I have been wired to write. Writing brings me so much personal joy and I find it often brings others joy and a sense of feeling seen. Writing provides an outlet to process my thoughts and feelings. I write a ton in my personal journals. Some of the times where I have felt closest to God was when I was daily writing in my journal. I find when I am in the habit of writing in my journal- I capture more life changing insights. This then leads to a greater awareness of God speaking and leading me. I am more attuned to the daily encouragments God gives me. The more I capture via writing, the more joy I experience. I searched for like 20 minutes to find a quote from Henri Nouwen but I’ll just have to give the gist of it. He said journaling is a long lost art/spiritual discipline that often reveals what is truly in our heart once the pen starts flowing (or keyboard gets going).

I have watched how God has used this gift of writing in my life. I love to write cards. Often someone will come to mind and the words to encourage them. I love to capture those words via an old school greeting card popped in the mail, or a text or email. It is the Lord who has given me this gift of encouragement and so when I walk in that gifting it bears good fruit of joy for myself and fruit of love for the recipient. I have had countless stories like this- “your card came at the most perfect timing. I needed that.” And this is not anything magical I did. It was God who put them on my heart with the words He knew they needed. I was merely the vessel of delivery. Saint Mother Teresa said it best with “I’m a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.” It is insanely exciting partnering with God and being his conduit of his love by following that quiet voice within whether that be in a check out line or while sitting at home.

So much of my writing has been private via my journal with an occasional blogpost here and there. Often I would take time to post on my monthly silent retreat.

But the last 2 years+ I have felt the desire to lean more into writing publicly. I felt this past fall was the right season to send my kids back to public schools. I had felt led to homeschool them the 4 years prior. I am so thankful that my daughter got to skip middle school. Middle school stinks for most everyone but seems especially hard on girls with the drama etc. My hope was to have more time to write with them being gone several hours a day.

This last fall was the first time in years that all my kids were away at school during the day. But very little writing was done since just months before we moved across the country from NC to CA. Jeremy was adjusting to a new job and rhythm. It has been a huge adjustment for all of us. I was trying to provide a refuge to my family in this new space. So I worked hard to unpack and hang up personal stuff to help this transition be as peaceful as possible. We realized by Thanksgiving that this new job was not going to work for our family though the salary included the home we were living in. So without the job, we also would not have a place to live. We hoped to buy but we did not feel peace on what we saw popping up for sale. So we then entered a season of mobile living. During the week we lived at the local regional park with our camper. Every Friday morning we would pack it up and park it at a friends then stay the weekend at an AirBNB or hotel. This mobile living lasted 47 days. Towards the end of this time we choose to just stay longer at a hotel and regional park so to not keep moving because the mobility was really starting to wear on our spirits. So all that to say there was not much writing in that season. It was a seasonal of survival. So when we finally moved into our newly purchased home it was such a relief.

For the last year I have been seeking to help bring stability to our family with all the changes and shifting. My spiritual director said in times of stress it is best to focus on minimal maintenance. So under her counsel daily I would write out just 3 things I needed to do for myself to help me stay afloat and to help me not feel like I was drowning. Most days it was walk, nap and do centering prayer/breathe deep. She also had me write 3 things that would help my family and home flow better. Many days the things were as simple as “put chicken in the crockpot”, put away 1 load of laundry, etc.

We have been in our home almost 3 months and I am feeling more margin and peace to write again. I hope to post more here. In my heart I’d love to write books or at least that is what I want. I do know that I want to encourage as many weary hearts as I can so I just assumed that is via books. But I am also encouraged that it could be via blogging. I want to stay mindful to what feels like peace and not dread. The thought of all the details of writing a book makes me feel dreadful so I will keep showing up here and see what comes of it. I want to follow the peace and not what I feel I “should be doing as a writer”. God can use this little pencil however he wants.