A Fresh Start
I have several other blogs, all with a different purpose and target audience:
1. Love, Heal Me and My Impressionistic Life (contains many posts about the struggles we encounter on our walks with God - written for the hurting Christian who wants raw honesty and deep thinking)
2. The Sweetly Broken Journey (includes my life story, a Bible Study for mature Christians, and a "self-help" journaling guide-book to help people grow in their faith and through the trials)
1. Love, Heal Me and My Impressionistic Life (contains many posts about the struggles we encounter on our walks with God - written for the hurting Christian who wants raw honesty and deep thinking)
2. The Sweetly Broken Journey (includes my life story, a Bible Study for mature Christians, and a "self-help" journaling guide-book to help people grow in their faith and through the trials)
3. Heather's Garden and Home (includes recipes, posts on gardening and family life and faith, and some social and political thoughts - written for the average person, not just Christians)
4. Iron Sharpens Iron Bible Study (contains only the Bible study I wrote for mature Christians)
5. Through the Refining Fire: Your "Sweetly Broken" Journey (contains only that "self-help guidebook" I wrote to help Christians on their walks with the Lord)
6. The One-Year "Don't Be Such A Chicken" Challenge (a year-long challenge for believers, with a new task or inspiring question for each day of the year)
7. Glory in Beauty (the pictures I took of my garden and other beautiful things)
But it's time for a fresh start. I have long dealt with fear and depression, severe loneliness and self-pity, feeling rather dead inside and unable to engage in life.
But I am slowly coming out of it (thanks to a really weird night). And I am ready to engage again, in life and in faith and in prayer. I'm not saying that I haven't been engaged at all, but I have been quite numb for a long time. Paralyzed.
But I'm waking up. And instead of continuing to focus on how broken I am, I am going to focus on the healing, on the good that can come from the bad. ("Healing Begins" by Tenth Avenue North)
And this blog will be my fresh start, a place for me to write about my journey from this point forward. But first, I will be reposting a bunch (a BUNCH!) of posts from my other blogs to set the tone for this blog, to show where I've been and some of the lessons I've learned, and to share the posts I've already written that are most relevant to this blog. But after that, I want start writing new posts about how the journey goes when one is waking up from a long spiritual slumber.
I'm not one to gloss over the dark things, the uncomfortable things. In order to truly heal and to grow, I need to be honest about the dark and ugly things. It is only by uncovering the dark things and exposing them to the Light - to the Lord - that He can begin to heal us. This is why I share things honestly, vulnerably. No good comes from hiding, from plastering on a fake smile and acting like everything is good when it's really not. So if you expect to find some light-hearted, "pat answer" truths here, a little burst of "God" to make you feel warm and cozy inside ... you've come to the wrong blog.
Maybe I'll even include my own personal prayer journal, the deepest things I am praying right now. If I do, it's simply for myself - because I am a journaller. I need to write things out so that I can see them and refer back to them and find errors in my thinking and remember to cover it all in truth and to bring it all back to God's goodness and faithfulness.
To be honest, this blog is mostly going to be for me, a place for me to write when I feel the need to get something off my mind, to keep track of my prayers, to vent, to write about my journey, etc. But it's my hope that struggling, hurting people might find encouragement and hope in these posts and prayers too, in seeing how another struggling, hurting Christian does it. It's always been encouraging to me when other people are honest about the things they've gone through and the fears and doubts they've experienced, instead of just glossing over the hard, ugly stuff and giving only the positive highlights.
I'd take the hard and ugly any day over a superficial, "fake smile" kind of faith.
Sometimes, it feels like a crazy, wild, scary ride - this journey through life. And sometimes, it takes a little crazy faith just to get through, stepping forward and following the Lord wherever He leads, even if it hurts or doesn't make sense to us right now.
I don't know where all this is going yet or how it will all turn out. But that's okay. That's what a blank page is for. A fresh start.
But I'm waking up. And instead of continuing to focus on how broken I am, I am going to focus on the healing, on the good that can come from the bad. ("Healing Begins" by Tenth Avenue North)
And this blog will be my fresh start, a place for me to write about my journey from this point forward. But first, I will be reposting a bunch (a BUNCH!) of posts from my other blogs to set the tone for this blog, to show where I've been and some of the lessons I've learned, and to share the posts I've already written that are most relevant to this blog. But after that, I want start writing new posts about how the journey goes when one is waking up from a long spiritual slumber.
I'm not one to gloss over the dark things, the uncomfortable things. In order to truly heal and to grow, I need to be honest about the dark and ugly things. It is only by uncovering the dark things and exposing them to the Light - to the Lord - that He can begin to heal us. This is why I share things honestly, vulnerably. No good comes from hiding, from plastering on a fake smile and acting like everything is good when it's really not. So if you expect to find some light-hearted, "pat answer" truths here, a little burst of "God" to make you feel warm and cozy inside ... you've come to the wrong blog.
Maybe I'll even include my own personal prayer journal, the deepest things I am praying right now. If I do, it's simply for myself - because I am a journaller. I need to write things out so that I can see them and refer back to them and find errors in my thinking and remember to cover it all in truth and to bring it all back to God's goodness and faithfulness.
To be honest, this blog is mostly going to be for me, a place for me to write when I feel the need to get something off my mind, to keep track of my prayers, to vent, to write about my journey, etc. But it's my hope that struggling, hurting people might find encouragement and hope in these posts and prayers too, in seeing how another struggling, hurting Christian does it. It's always been encouraging to me when other people are honest about the things they've gone through and the fears and doubts they've experienced, instead of just glossing over the hard, ugly stuff and giving only the positive highlights.
I'd take the hard and ugly any day over a superficial, "fake smile" kind of faith.
Sometimes, it feels like a crazy, wild, scary ride - this journey through life. And sometimes, it takes a little crazy faith just to get through, stepping forward and following the Lord wherever He leads, even if it hurts or doesn't make sense to us right now.
I don't know where all this is going yet or how it will all turn out. But that's okay. That's what a blank page is for. A fresh start.
