It's baaaaa-aaackk.... and why

Okay, let’s just get it out of the way.

I haven’t posted a blog here in one year, five months, and eight days (but who’s counting?).

In the blogging world, I’m likely known as a deadbeat blogger. If there were such a thing as a “Dead Blogs” list, mine would be listed. Faithful readers removed their bookmarks of this site off their computers long ago and moved on.

You get the idea. The blog was stuck in a corner and forgotten for some time.

If you ask me why, I could give you a dozen answers, all of them valid (for starters, I’m on my computer enough for work as it is, and there’s barely enough time to communicate with my own husband and children).

But most of those answers would neatly and conveniently skirt around much less apparent and much more entrenched issues in my own heart. Issues that are complicated on their face but underneath the surface all point to one undeniable diagnosis: living life without intention.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Here she goes.

Yep, here I go.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to somewhat blindly rush through my day, beating deadlines, wiping noses, and neatly wrapping up everything in my schedule. Messy things like relationship problems and looming obstacles and personal flaws are rationalized, justified, shoved to the side to deal with later, or just plain old ignored. In short, I bulldoze.

I get it done, but I couldn’t possibly tell you what I did or why I did it. At the end of any given week not to save my life could I tell you what I fixed for dinner or who I talked to or what I accomplished on any day of that week. I often have to check my calendar backwards or my emails from the day before to get an idea of just what happened with those hours in my day.

There’s no awareness. There’s no pause. There’s no evaluation. There’s no reflection. There’s just doing. All in the name of busyness/productivity/efficiency/gratification/fill in the blank.

Sounds pretty horrible, right? Sounds pretty personal, too, hmm? It is. Then why on earth am I sharing it for all the world to see here?

To be honest, I’m not counting on many others reading it…. Just kidding… sort of.

I actually have to give some credit to my best friend, who has recently bared her soul and flaws and questions for a much, much wider audience through her blog. For someone who’s motto has often been “fake it till you can make it,” it’s been huge and humbling and inspiring. And completely a God thing… for who or what else could give us the strength and courage to look ourselves in the face and admit just how screwed up we really are?

If I were to be even more honest, I’d say we’re ALL faking it until we can make it… we’re all wearing masks of perfection and got-it-together images to cover up something that is anything but.

Can I just say I think this world would be in much better shape if we were all more real with ourselves and with each other? About our fears, about our hopes, about our mistakes, about our struggles… why do we try to be something we’re clearly not? I’m on a mission to be authentic.

I even intentionally chose the photo at the topic of this blog to prove my point. Looks like a beautiful, profound photo of a perfect family walking down a perfect beach on a perfect evening. Right? WRONG. Did you know the wind was blowing at approximately 45mph and we could barely see straight? That we all had our panties in a wad because the stupid weather had prevented a photo shoot that actually WOULD have been perfect? That minutes before this photo was taken Hilton and I had gotten into a silly spat and were holding hands only for the photo? That with our faces turned away we were both muttering about the injustice of it all and Ben would you STOP kicking the sand?

See?


And then there’s something to be said about accountability. Putting big statements out there even on a little ole blog in the corner of the vast Internet puts my feet to the fire, so to speak. If I believe these things, if I say these things, if I communicate these things-- I better be living them out. If not, feel free to call me out (just know that turnabout is fairplay… lol).

Let me speak to a minute here on using our gifts as well. It’d be a slap in God’s face for me to not freely say that He has blessed me with a gift of communication through creativity—through words and art/designs. I have several choices on where to go with that. I can ignore/deny it. I can abuse/hoard/exploit it for selfish purposes. Or I can let Him work through this gift and somehow glorify Him with it through whatever I create or do.

The right choice seems so simple, but I can assure you it’s not. As someone paid hourly, it’s a moment-by-moment thing for me to avoid a life where I am calculating how much money I’m making or losing based on what I happen to be doing. The only thing that truly keeps me on track is the CONSTANT question I must ask myself: What I have been created to do RIGHT NOW?

Good grief, this is getting LONG, but I also want to recognize the fact that I’ve traded the “This is my life” blog title to “To this is OUR life.” It might already seem obvious, but my goal is to make it clear that I don’t live in a vacuum (and neither do you). It’s not just about me. This can be taken in a broader perspective, but I want to make clear that this blog belongs to my family, first and foremost.

So, Sarah, exactly what does all of this babbling this have to do with funny stories about your kids pooping their pants and saying hilarious things? You wonder. Speaking of which, when are we going to hear those stories? You ask. And are ALL your blogs going to be so melodramatic and uncomfortable? You question.

All good questions. And my answer simple: My ability to use the resources I need to collect, input, and share those stories hinges directly on all of the things I’ve mentioned here. And I can’t promise it’s all going to be laugh-out-loud anecdotes and epic tales of disastrous days… but I will do my best to carve out a part of my life to come here and share what God’s doing in our lives.

In short: No inner peace, no funny.

Mm-kay?