Hello Again

It’s been seven months.  

In the three years since I started this blog, I’ve not gone longer than three months without writing.  Until now.    

Seven months is a long time for a writer not to write.  You have asked me where I’ve been, and I’ve asked myself the same.  I feel as though I owe you some kind of explanation. 

I’ve still been up to my favorite things: studying, pondering, crafting.  But this year I poured that energy, for the first time, into sermon construction.  And into overcoming fear and anxiety about sermon delivery.  Allow me to give you some backstory. 

Roughly two years ago, I was invited to speak at a women’s event at my church.  The topic was rest, and I’d spent my free time for a year studying Sabbath. I was over-the-moon about getting to synthesize all I’d learned.  I wanted to talk Sabbath with anyone who would listen, so the opportunity to do exactly that was priceless. 

Immediately after that event, my pastor suggested to me that there was a calling on my life to teach.  If I was willing to consider that, he said, then he would like to help: to guide and develop that skill for whatever God might have planned.  

A little over a year ago, we started meeting regularly: my pastor, another mentee like myself named Travis, and me. I listened intently, furiously scribbled notes, and wrestled with this new proposition: preaching.  I was terrified.  

I’ve always been prone to worry.  I’m naturally risk-adverse.  I prioritize safety and anonymity.  And public speaking isn’t writing.  You can’t edit the work, hitting “publish” when it’s just so.  To speak is to perform a live act, and it violates hundreds of my personal preferences.  It takes courage; something I really have to work up. 

The past year has been exactly that.  Working up.  Listening, praying, wrestling, questioning.  This path dovetailed beautifully with a heart change—an inner transformation—I was experiencing in a spiritual formation class at church called Deeper Journey.  The two things worked together on my soul, filled the pages of my journal, and drove me over and over again to prayer.  My faith—the strength and reality of a real relationship with Jesus—felt as though it was in the forge.  A season of fire and heat, of being pounded out on an anvil, and of being put back in the fire again.  

It’s been so personal, and so hard to explain.  I didn’t know where to start to even try, but I also didn’t know how to write about anything else, and so—silence.  A post here or there, but mostly quiet.  

I spent the first half of this year counting down the days to my first sermon.  I’m not going to lie, I obsessed a bit.  I studied, worked, crafted, and reworked.  I spent creative time on little else.  I preached my first Sunday morning on Father’s Day, June 20^th, and my second three weeks later on July 11^th.  I’m now done for a season, not scheduled to speak again for several months.  

In some ways, those two dates in June and July felt like jumping out of an airplane, trusting God to be my parachute.  Now that I’m on the ground in one piece, I’m experiencing an unusual mix of emotions.  There’s relief, but also the question I can’t help but ask: “now what?” 

I’d like to find my writing rhythm here again.  There are so many things I want to share with you, not the least of which is the heart journey I’ve been on: the Deeper Journey curriculum and its profound insights into Biblical truths; the neuroscience, spiritual disciplines, and Bible stories that helped me cope with my fear and anxiety; and even the sermons themselves, as their content and verses, at least for now, are still turning themselves over in my mind and heart. I’m not sure where to start.

But I tend to overthink things.  I know this about myself. So I think for this I simply need to take my Dad’s advice: just start writing, the rest will follow.  

So, here we go.

Hello again.