Preparing to write

Thanks to the help of a very dear friend of mine, I have my blog up and running.  Yet, I struggle to really know where to start.

Do I start 3 years ago when I fell, reached up and found God.  Or do I start today and go backwards?  By sharing my spiritual journey, I will have to expose my sinfulness.

I also selfishly say to myself, if I’m going to spend time writing I want people to read. How do people find my blog?  Why would they want to read this blog post?  Who can I reach? Who does Heavenly Father need me to reach? 

I am a follower of some really, really amazing blogs.  I have turned to many blogs in the past week and I find myself in tears.  I can never write like her?  She has over 2000 followers and I have none.  There is a reason she has that many, she writes so well and I feel it in my heart.  I don’t know what I am doing.  I am so afraid to fail Him.  I am simply obeying with blurry eyes not sure where He is taking me. 

Today, Heavenly Father clearly opened a window that provided me a view with these humbling words.

The call of God is not to make you popular. It’s to make a difference. If you can abandon your need to be liked, you can be a great writer. You can be used to seep Truth into places of which you are unaware.

You never know who is reading. Your experience and your questions are not unique to you. What is unique to you is your voice and your calling. One of the hardest parts of writing is when you have to write without needing to know if you’re being heard. If you’re only writing for acceptance, then you’re not writing anything worth reading. You are merely the thick fluff that the thirsty must cut through to find the Living Well.

When God has given you a gift for writing, you are not the work that is on display. He is. If you look at a bouquet of flowers and marvel about the vase that holds them, then the florist did something wrong.

Would your writing be different if you were doing it anonymously? Write like that.

When you hit “publish” and it makes you feel exposed, that’s when you know you’ve written something that matters. People stop cutting through the fluff when they find that stuff. They stop for a drink. You may never know it, but they do.