Many years ago I started this little blog because I love to write and I also love what is true. I've spent many an hour pouring over God's word, meditating on it in my mind as He teaches me from that well worn book. Often I have used my life experiences to speak the truth in love. It may have been our life in the Air Force, mothering, adoption and FASD or educating my children at home; each has given me a reason to write about the parallels between what I'm wondering through and how truth effects that reality. It has been my aim to speak hard truths in love. I probably have not always met that aim. I'm sure I've missed the mark. I always want to challenge and encourage not be unnecessarily offensive.
When I started writing here, I was so young that I didn't know I was young. It's not that I'm old now. No, that's not what I mean. Inexperienced and naive is what I mean. Often I was quick to speak (or type rather) believing that I had the simple answers to life's hard questions. This doesn't mean I was always wrong, rather to put it more bluntly, I thought I knew more than I really did. To further this predicament along, those that I listened to were themselves young and restless. It is not that I did not learn or glean anything worth knowing (I most certainly did) but what it did not do is prepare me for the moment we live in now. I had a very pietistic understanding of truth. It was not preparatory for the world my children would now walk into. In other words, I had an understanding of truth but was not wise to understand how to apply that truth to my life in light of the world around me.
God has a way of using time and age to humble. No doubt been using the 8 humans I've been raising and teaching as well as moving every 3-4. As I've said before, on my long list of priorities, writing has taken a back seat. And I've been ok with that. Mostly, anyway. Even when I have the words, I haven't had the capacity even to think through the implications of what I am trying to convey, though I've had the desire. I've never stopped wanting to write. I do believe it is a gift (that is to be stewarded well) to be able to put words down that mean something especially when it comes to communicate what is true. What has been hardest is knowing just exactly when the "right time" is.
Ironically, it's hard to put it all into words. I've written before about how grace and truth isn't just a virtue signal for me. And how just important clarity is. But I continued to be stuck without the words to write except I do have them. Weird huh? I would sit down with everything I wanted to write running through my head and just be stuck. Like a drowning bee, I was trying to access water from a large water bucket but didn't have the "tools" (or hunk of wood, rather) to pull myself up onto and fly out of. It felt a little like drowning in a sea of words. There were too many, but not enough.
That all changed when I ran across this YouTube post from Krista Bontrager about the things she has changed her mind on in the past 4 years. Our list is strikingly similar. Watching her explain, in a very vulnerable way on the public inter webs, what has flabbergasted her about the past 4 years, gave me the courage I have needed to write. Most importantly, she apologizes at one point for encouraging her fellow brothers and sister's in Christ to receive an experimental therapy treatment in the name of love of the brethren. She equates her definition of love to the law of Love in Christ and for that she rightly recognizes as sin and repents. Publicly. In a world greatly lacking in courage, Krista proved to be courageous. Courage begets courage as someone wiser than I has once said.
Part of the reason for the writers block (beyond cowardice) is practically, the things I want to write about are necessarily divisive. They aren't divisive because they should be but because the Christian world has stopped thinking Christianly. I know many people come to this space over the years to read about what I'm doing with my kids or to get a fun update, not to read about something that seems to be politically driven. For lack of a better word, I don't want to be disloyal or, again, unnecessarily offensive to those of you that have followed along all these years.
Because of this, I will no longer be writing here. My desire is to help Christian woman think Christianly about issues that the we are facing today and help them to see that we do not need to shy away from hard conversations or saying hard truths in a plain way in the name of being "nice" or "loving" or "preserving relationships." In a world where most of the prominent women's voices very often lean into different kinds of -isms and what podcaster Allie Beth Stuckey has labeled toxic empathy, my desire is to humbly offer another seasoned voice of reason. I often wonder "where are the older women" who are talking about what matters? Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places, but I do want to help equip women to think through issues by tethering it to what is actually true from the standard: God's very Word. I want to start this by offering a post about part of my own story. My goal is to have it written by my 22nd anniversary of becoming Mrs. Pope. Please pray for me as I've never written my story down for some painful reasons but I'm determined to start at the start. I humbly hope that you'll join me over on substack beginning in April where I plan to write at least monthly.
Lastly, I know that many of you who have followed along the last 20 years will choose to no longer to read what I write. I won't ever hold this against you. I have loved writing here. I have loved your readership and enduring encouragement in my life. I hope I have loved you well with my words, but the time has come for one more farewell, friends.
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