Two-Year Hiatus

Nearly two years have passed since I posted anything here. While I was writing my last series of blog posts (in which I told the story of how Ben and I met, courted, and married), I had so much more I wanted to say. Though I fully intended to keep writing, some of the events of 2014 proved too difficult, too painfully life-altering for me to sit down and write about them then. I was too raw, and the wounds too fresh.

Months dragged by as I struggled to process all that had happened and wrestled through the ever-changing onslaught of thoughts and emotions. I imagined that I would begin writing again when I had come out on the other side of the struggle and was able to think retrospectively about everything. I was afraid that my writing would be irrational, full of folly, and downright unpolished if I began writing any sooner than that. But I continued to struggle deeply throughout 2014 and well into 2015.

Now it is already 2016 and I have learned that in many ways the struggle is here to stay. It may look different as time passes, but there will be no “moving on,” no “getting over it” or coming out on the other side, at least not fully. As one author put it, “The detour you are on is actually the road.” Having this ongoing struggle in my life is simply the path that God has called me to walk, the cup He has asked me to drink. Though I would never have chosen it for myself, I am learning to say along with Jesus, “Father… not my will, but yours, be done.”

So after a two-year hiatus, I want to start writing again, mostly because I am afraid of forgetting. If I don’t take the time to write about life’s difficult experiences – in the midst of the processing and in spite of the struggle – I may forget how they changed me, or what the Lord has taught me through them. I may forget the details of what happened when, and how. I may forget all the feelings that I felt and how deeply I felt them. I may forget the things I have often thought about or wrestled with. These details are too significant to let them become forgotten things.

 That is why I will do my best to write. Perhaps it will also help me to process the struggle more clearly, or perhaps it will simply help others to better understand my struggle. Or maybe – just maybe – someone else out there, wearily sloshing through the messiness of life, might read the unpolished words of this struggling saint and be encouraged on their way.