My Bowl is Full

One year ago today, I posted my first blog entry entitled  “Amber Opportunities” about collecting amber rocks and interesting opportunities.

 

What a difference one year makes.

Initially, I started my blog “for the kids.” I live with a hazy, nebulous sense that my days are numbered, or equally nebulous, that something “bad” is going to happen imminently. Yes, I should probably see a therapist about that, but until that happens, I figured that I should start writing things down for my kids to know in the event that I'm not around to tell them. You know, not like how to do laundry or how to cook a meal, but all those sermons they might need to hear at some point from their mother. Or perhaps more accurately, sermons that their mother might feel obliged to impart to them.

 

So I started writing down things that I believe, or aim to believe.

And the kids did read the first few posts – partly because I told them to – but it didn't take long and my blog was no longer “for the kids.”

It became “for me.” It became my way of paying attention to my own life, of looking intentionally for lessons I could learn from things that were going on around me, of processing my own struggles, and then in a way that is difficult to describe, this paying attention and looking and processing became a way of praying for me.

I have never stuck to a creative outlet as long and consistently as I have to this blog and it has been life-changing. I considered starting a blog for several years before I actually got up the gumption to because I didn't think I had anything to write about; nothing was really happening in my life. But when each week I expected myself to have something to post, I opened my eyes to my own life and realized there are always things happening. Small things that are really big things. Big things that are really small things. Tiny things that hold nuggets of wisdom waiting to be mined. 

 

And now my bowl is full. Just as I have continued picking up my amber stones along the same stretch of road for a whole year and adding them to my collection, so I have continued to pick up moments of insight in my life for a whole year and written them down. Some stones are big, some are deeply hued, some are a little too rough for the collection, some are too small to be significant. But they all went in my bowl and now it is full. As my life is full. And I am thankful. For the big things, the rough things, the small things, the beautifully smooth and coloured things. I am grateful. 

 

“[The Lord] anoints my head will oil,

my cup overflows.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

Psalm 23:5b-6

It is deeply gratifying and humbling for me to realize that there are people in this world who take a few minutes of their lives, some even regularly, to read what I have written. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.