Something New and Exciting

I wrote my first blog post on October 11, 2005.  That's eons and 738 blog posts ago.  I can look back at the number of posts I wrote in a year and often tell what season of life I was in: the year I met and married Sean there were zero posts, the year I took a blog course and played around with it lots was by far the highest, and since I've had my shop I've written only about a third as much as before.

At various times I've thought of being done with it, but usually decided I enjoyed it too much as a creative outlet to give it up, even if I wasn't posting regularly; other times I heard from an unexpected person that they read / follow / enjoy my blog, and that was motivation to keep it up.

This season of my life is a time of wondering what's next.  My girl is 17 and graduating this year and making her plans for life after high school.  My boy just turned 5 and is going to be starting Kindergarten in the fall.  It's the age old mama question - what will I do with myself?  Find a job once he gets to full days?  What do I want to work at?  And for the more immediate future, I've been wondering about how I can best serve my God, outside the roles of being a wife and mom.

I keep coming back to blogging.  And I feel it's time to write a new chapter.  I've bought a domain and am in the middle of putting something together over on WordPress.  I thought of moving this blog over there, but decided to start a whole new thing, so I will keep this space for family updates, creative stuff, book recommendations, and what ever other random obsessions I indulge in, just as it has been.

There are a gazillion voices online; mine will be one more that chooses to bring hope and light and points to Jesus.  There will always be room for more voices doing that.  My new blog will be about living with faith.  I'll be sharing what I'm learning and noticing in God's word and in my life.  One verse that jumped out at me as I've been figuring out what this should look like is Psalm 105:1, which says:

Oh give thanks to the Lord,

call upon his name;

make known His deeds among the peoples.

Thankfulness, prayer, and telling His stories.  I want to do that.  It's been a few months of bouncing this idea around already, and I'm sure it will continue to be refined as I go, but I'm excited to be at the point where I am almost ready to launch.  Tuesday, February 7 will be the big day!  I will make sure to post a link so you can check it out.

Thank you for hanging out with me here this last decade and for sticking around.  I sure appreciate you.

PS - There's a Part II to this!  I'll let you know about that in a couple of days...