Really Going To Start Blogging Again

Hello.

I have a friend on Facebook (an internet, email group friend, not an "in real life friend", although I know that we would be friends in real life if we lived in the same town) who recently shared a link to this blog post.

While reading her post, I found myself agreeing with some of her points.  I have definitely gotten out of the habit of blogging for a variety of reasons.  I began this blog over six years ago, and until this summer, I have posted fairly regularly.  But this summer I got writer's block. What do I have left to say that I already have not already said? Why I am even blogging?  That, along with the fact that I feel my life getting more and more complicated rather than simpler, which is what I crave, has kept me from blogging.

From the beginning of my blog, I have purposed to keep it upbeat and positive.  Not that I don't have my share of problems or that my life is perfect, but I want to be encouraging, not depressing.  But there is always that balance.  I don't want to appear as someone who has it all together, because I certainly don't. I strive to serve a perfect God, one who created me in His image, and I try follow his commands daily.  I also fail daily.

So that's the struggle.  How to blog in a realistic, encouraging way without painting a false picture of total success.  Since I have not been able to figure that out over the last couple of months, I have just stopped writing altogether.  Now I don't want y'all to think that I am having some kind of mid-life crisis or that I am in the middle of a major personal or family catastrophe, because it's nothing like that, but I have been overwhelmed for a few months.

Parenting older teens and youngish children is challenging.  Logistically, emotionally, and even physically--even though I though parenting the newborn, toddler, and preschooler combination was physically exhausting too.  Older children require more brain cells to parent--papers to edit, relationship troubles, teams, meetings, music lessons, and practices, to coordinate, and so on.  I have repeatedly told my close friends that taking care of older children is so much harder in some ways than when they were small and my biggest tasks were changing diapers, fixing sippee cups, cleaning up endless messes, and buying groceries with small children in tow without losing my sanity.

I am so thankful that my older children are all Christians.  All of my children are precious gifts from God, and I treasure them.  Somewhere along the way I have become a slave to the tyranny of the urgent.  I am looking for ways to slow down and simplify.

I truly hope to get back to blogging on a regular basis.  I hope I have something that you want to read, and maybe getting my thoughts down on paper (or on the screen) will help me as well.

Please comment with any topics you would like me to write about.  :)

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal."

2 Corinthians 4:16-18