Knock knock. I’d ask if anyone is home, but I know the answer. This feels like opening a squeaky old door, timidly entering a long-lost room with cobwebs and old dreams scattered underfoot. I didn’t come here with the intention of writing anything; quite the opposite. After trying three passwords to find the correct key, I found my way back in and started digging back, back, back to that first blog post. The one I wrote sitting on my bed after church that January afternoon almost eleven years ago. I had no idea it had been that long. I didn’t remember the time of year and I didn’t remember my pastor’s sermon (sorry, Brian); I only remembered that it had spurred me to do something with the gnawing I’d had in my gut to give writing a go. So I did, and a decade later I’ve unwrapped them and decided to go from private to public in this space once more. This isn’t about me becoming a “blogger” again, I may not scribble anything else here for another decade. But today, it’s about me making space for what feels like another blank page I’m calling “The Shift.”

A lot has happened from thirty-six to forty-six. No more children (I read on my about page that I longed for gangs more than two…I honestly never remember having that thought. It’s funny how time erases some things.) Most everything else on that page still rings true, though. I’m a walking-talking oxymoron in many ways and still more than perfectly imperfect. Then there is Jesus. My Jesus who I felt so close to when I wrote on that new blank page. My Jesus who I served as well as I knew how for so many years…until I didn’t. My Jesus who never left me or abandoned me even when I abandoned Him. My Jesus who has been drawing me back closer and closer this past year. And now, the shift.

I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know where He’s leading, all I can see is His hand through the fog. And I’m at peace with that because in the fog with God is all the Light I need.

You’re welcome to poke around these old halls of mine; though I’ll ask for your grace in what you find. I don’t remember much of what I wrote, but I know it was important to me at the time. This space helped me grow in many ways, hopefully as a writer, but also more than that. In these words I hashed out who I was, who I had been and who I was becoming. In the past eleven years I’ve learned there’s beauty in it all, most especially the ashes.

xx,
m