Blog Day

"The act of writing turns out to be its own reward...  If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse.  Writing involves seeing people suffer and finding some meaning therein.  Your job is to see people as they really are, and to do this, you have to know who you are in the most compassionate possible sense.  If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal.  So you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work... Life is like a recycling center where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions."

~Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird ❤

Eleven years ago on this day, I opened this new blog and wrote my very first post.  (I had a Xanga blog and some MySpace posts at some point before that, but this one is something I have stuck with for over a decade, and that makes me feel proud and thankful.)

Writing can be a very cathartic outlet for me to process my thoughts in hard seasons.  And I am grateful to have so many fun memories and quotes and vacations documented here.  To have a place to pay tribute to the people who shape and influence my life.  A place where I can see God's faithfulness play out through the seasons, where I can look back and see what has changed and what has remained the same.

And I'm thankful that YOU care enough to read!! ❤

I have no plans to shut it down any time soon.  I hope to continue writing and growing, speaking life and coming alive and becoming more honest and courageous in my writing!  I want to focus less on the past (or only on what has value and brings joy), forgetting what lies behind and pressing forward with God!

Anyway, hope you have a wonderful and safe 4th of July tomorrow!!  "Raise a glass to freedom!" =) 
And I hope I get to watch The Patriot at some point.  Huzzah!

(*I did a search for "American flag" on Google Photos and made this happy collage. lol)