I had a blog post written here. It was long, and detailed, and clinical – like a lot of the papers and speeches I wrote throughout high school and college. It was also so boring I couldn’t finish writing it. At some point I’ll probably come back and finish the thought because it’s something I still want to share, but this blog post is about blog posts. I have become the metablogger. That was a joke, you may chuckle now.
I don’t do well with day-to-day blogging (or twitter. what’s the point of twitter? “hey EVERYONE I am driving to work now.” “STATUS UPDATE: I am now actually at work.” “Just to let you all know, it is now lunchtime at my work and I really want to share this with the world. Check back in 15 minutes to hear the exciting details about the content of my lunch.”) so I’m not really sure what I’m going to be writing about, because here’s the thing: I’m not writing an academic paper here. I don’t need to impress you people with how supernifty I am at writing. There’s a solid dozen of you (much love) who are signed up for this blog because (I earnestly hope) you want to share this experience with me. So I want to share my experiences with you. I don’t want to bore you with sermons or twit at you with ‘uplifting thought of the day’ microblogs. I want you guys to know how God is working in my life, and I want to do so in a way that has nothing to do with the 5-point research paper outline I got so good at in school.
I’ve always thought of myself as some awesome writer, and so I figured this blogging thing would come easy to me. It’s not that easy. I read blogs from some of my squadmates (and I’m trying to catch up but when a dozen of you all post on the same day holy cow I’m behind again) and I see a rawness, an honesty of emotion and will that just blows me out of the water. I think if I let myself I could easily hide behind a clinical wall of words, detaching you all from the experiences I have on the Race, and come home and feel good that I wrote some pretty cool stuff. I don’t want that. So much of my life already has been a facade, a sham, a lie – telling the world that everything’s fine, the person inside me can take a back seat to the mask I want you all to believe in. I can’t grow closer to God if I point the mask at Him, too. I can’t reduce the things of God in my life to trite phrases or obscure theological ponderings.
I mentioned already that I’m done being scared of what people think of me. Now I’m done being scared of what people see of me. So here’s the real: I earnestly and deeply desire to know God’s plan for me, and I equally deeply desire to share God’s work in me with you. So from here out, what I get is what you get. I won’t promise an amazing blogging experience, I can’t even promise I’ll make sense half the time. I can promise you this: I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into with this missions trip thing, but I know I’m following God – and everything He puts in my path is going to be amazing, and I’ll do my best to share that amazing with you.
