A Work in Progress After 5 Years of Blogging

A few weeks ago, this blog passed the five-year mark. It happened quietly, without the slightest bit of fanfare. But it’s still a significant milestone, at least to me.

Blogging best practices mostly overwhelm me, but the one piece of advice I have always tried to heed is to be consistent. Which means that, over the last 60 months, a post has shown up in this space almost every week.

For the first three or four years, I wrote mostly after the fact. I mined my life for past lessons, looking for experiences and insights that might be of some encouragement to someone else.

For a writer, there’s nothing wrong with looking at life through the rearview mirror. There’s a lot of wisdom in it, actually. Hindsight offers a perspective that we often can’t see when we’re in the thick of it. If others can benefit from our mistakes and struggles, it somehow redeems them, I think.

If you’ve been along for the ride these past several months, perhaps you know where I’m going with this. The rearview mirror is still there, but what’s been happening here has been much more current.

It was never my plan to become the blogger who writes about her parents dying. But my parents did die. Both of them, five weeks apart.

They were both 86—almost eight years older than the average life expectancy in the United States. They lived good lives and influenced many people. They certainly impacted our family in ways we probably won’t realize for years.

But the loss is a profound one. The journey to the end was unexpected for each of my parents and—at least for my dad—sometimes excruciating.

Maybe I should have stopped blogging during this season. I often thought about it, actually. But writing through it seemed like the next best thing. So I kept going, week after week. I kept “reflecting on life and faith,” as my blog subtitle puts it, even when my mental lens was clouded by uncertainty and tears.

At times, I have wondered whether what I’ve been writing these past many months has been too narrowly focused or even too depressing. I haven’t tried to turn this space into my own personal journal or processing center, but sometimes it has felt like that.

I haven’t taken a survey, but I have asked a friend or two. “Is this too much? Am I, to paraphrase something my dad once said, getting too much ‘mileage out of this thing’ with my parents? And will that push people away?”

“No,” they’ve said. “Don’t stop. Keep writing.”

So here we are.

In some ways, the writing has been a bit easier lately. It sort of flows from my gut, just like it always has, but now it’s a little more stark and a little more raw.

I don’t fret about every line as much as I used to. I’m much more likely now to go with the flow of the words, rather than to over think them. At the same time, though, it also can be difficult to communicate exactly what I’m trying to say.

Just recently, I wrote a post I really liked. It made me tear up while I was writing it, which in the past has always been a good sign. If it makes me cry, I think, perhaps it will touch the tender parts in others’ hearts as well.

But when I asked Randy for his opinion—as I often do before I hit “publish”—he didn’t like it. The part that was most impactful to me—the lines that came to me in the shower where my best ideas often spring forth—just didn’t make sense to him.

My husband doesn’t often have this kind of reaction to what I write. His suggestions usually include changing a word here or deleting a line there—helpful edits, to be sure, but not normally ones that involve the recycle bin.

“You should rewrite it,” he said, rather bluntly.

It was a Monday night and I was tired from my GriefShare class. I didn’t have the energy to make any changes before my usual posting time of Tuesday morning, so I just decided to skip the blog post that week.

When I looked at it again the next morning, though, his critiques made much more sense. A spark of a new idea prompted me to change the post it to reflect what I really wanted to convey all along, and I posted the piece—just a few hours later than usual.

My point is, after five years of doing this (and decades of writing professionally), I’m still a work in progress. There’s always room to stretch, to grow, to trash something that doesn’t quite work.

A year from now, my writing, my heart and even parts of my life may all look different. I don’t know how, exactly. Only God knows that, and at this point, I’m content to let Him reveal the picture in His way and timing.

All I know is that, as long as I’m able, I’m going to keep processing here in this little corner of the internet. I’m going to keep hoping and praying—always praying—that what I write will somehow speak life and truth into someone else’s heart and mind.

I’m not trying to blaze a trail for the masses. Honestly, if my words whack a few weeds out of the way for you every now and then, that’s enough for me.

Thanks for being here, my friend. The journey wouldn’t be the same without you.

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, Let’s Have Coffee, Faith on Fire, Faith ‘n Friends and Grace & Truth.