A new Year...

I have spent a decent amount of time the past few days thinking about resolutions and goals for 2010 and beyond, both for my life at large as well as for my blog.
When I first started blogging, years ago, I did it as a replacement for pen and paper journaling. I did it to share photos of our children with faraway family. I did it because it was fun. I discovered that blogging was a great place for me to find my voice.
I used it as a tool to help me muddle my way thru my first miscarriage.
But have remained silent thru my second loss.
A way of protecting myself I guess but that too will become more in focus in the new year as we begin the journey into "the why" of it all. I will warn you. I am going to be brutal honest in that journey because I believe that somewhere there is a woman who will read this down the road and she will need to hear what I have to share.
I am going to be real and authentic and sometimes that will be a little uncomfortable.
For both of us.
I am, however, telling you here and now that in 2010 I will blog boldly .

Have you ever struggled with the temptation to come across, perhaps via your Facebook status or what not, as much more together than you really are? I know, unless I am deliberately bringing my will in alignment with God's, I am tempted much more often to Tweet "I just made homemade sugar cookies with my children!" than I am so share, "I just got so tired of being with my children that I sent them to their rooms for nap an hour early just so I could have some blasted time alone."
It can be scary to think about sharing boldly, blogging boldly, Tweeting boldly, Facebooking boldly and just living boldly. If all your friends have social media updates like, "I'm on a date with my adorable husband!" it can be a bit fear inducing to update with the truth of your moment, if it's anything like moments I've experienced in my own marriage: "Big Daddy and I were supposed to go on a date tonight, but we got into such a wretched fight that we called it off and he went upstairs to play PS3 instead."
Indeed, I think God sometimes uses our fear (of being ridiculed or of looking worse than others or whatever) to move us out of our comfort zones. And He wants us out of our comfort zones so He can refine our character. To guide us towards conforming to His character. You see, sometimes when I blog, I find that my human nature causes me to care about my comfort level. But God doesn't.

God cares about my character, not my comfort.

I have decided that this year, I am going to be making a concerted effort to try to blog boldly, paying less attention to my comfort and more attention to just plain doing the right thing, whether it's comfortable or not. In fact, when what I am doing is not comfortable, those are sometimes the things I should be doing, in my life and with my blog.

Today I would like to encourage you to blog boldly. too. Or whatever. Live boldly. Parent boldly. Work boldly. Love boldly. Blog, live, parent, work, love according to your beliefs. From your core. Because you value your character and not because you want to be comfortable. Take no heed (or at least as little heed as you humanly can) to what others say or to what you think they are thinking. After all, God does not care about our comfort level. Nor does He judge us by what others say. He judges us by His standards, regardless of what the world thinks of us.

Listen to what your heart says, be sensitive to what God wants you to do with your life in 2010 and beyond. And then, just go out and do it. Blog boldly, live boldly, parent boldly, work boldly, love boldly, and forget the naysayers.

An unwritten chapter in my life waiting for the words to be written by me....boldly written words.