This Writing Thing

The internet is a crazy place. I found myself staring at this white blankness for a few minutes pondering how to start. Do I re-introduce myself back to this inanimate soulless piece of cyberspace? Or to the potential people who might actually read it? Or simply start anew? When did the internet become this void of expanse that doesn't really exist but makes our words reality? Just some philosophy for you today.

It's been almost 3 years since I last posted. My world got smaller and more private with the birth of our 4th child. Malachi Jonathan joined our family on October 8, 2017, overdue and our biggest baby at 9lbs 9oz. I hesitate to say completing our family because God's bigger than our plans and goals. But perhaps saying completing our biological family.

The path I've been walking since his birth has too many twists, turns, and stories to give you a summary here. I hope they will come out in the days to come. Because I need to be here, writing, sharing, maybe over-sharing, and pouring my heart out.

I hid from vulnerability in the "public" eye so much in the past 3 years. Fear, trauma, hurt, more fear. No more. This week, something has changed.

A little note if you don't know me, last July/August God seemed to move in my heart and make it plain I needed to finish my 4-year bachelor's degree. So since the beginning of October I've been taking classes through Bethel University for a degree in Christian Ministries. I said and have said, I don't know what I'll do with it, but God does. This is just obedience to the next right thing. The classes are designed for adult undergraduates, so they are set up in 5 week block classes of one 3-credit class at a time. Not going to lie, it's super intense. It's exhausting. I feel inadequate and weak most days. But I love it. I love learning and growing. Especially about God and myself.

In my current class, we had to take the "StrengthsFinder" assessment. In short it's a large set of questions that help you specifically know your top 5 "Strengths", of which there are 34. It's developed by Gallup and very sound and accurately tested and used worldwide. I find it fascinating how these 5 strengths could also compare to a Spiritual gifts inventory, your Meyer-Briggs types, and the Enneagram. It's all fascinating stuff to someone with a strength of "intellection" like myself. Basically we like to think about thinking. So much of my life makes sense now in an almost humorous way.
My top 5 strengths if you're curious (and I hope you are), were Empathy, Intellection, Developer, Connectedness, and Restorative. Diving deep into some of these provided me some really interesting info, and a new perspective of looking at myself. I've been learning to see the beauty and gifts God has put in me as they truly are. One caution in the Restorative and even in the other strengths, is that I can be VERY self-critical in my introspection. This is very true. I give more grace to others than myself. In being very hard on myself and holding myself to a standard of perfection however, I can come off as if I'm holding others to those standards as well. When I'm really not meaning to or having a heart that way. If I truly believe God made me as unique and special as he says, I need to start treating myself as such. Which means the truth needs to win.

Another intriguing thing about my 5 strengths that led me back here, is that no less than 3 of them talked about how writing is not just a good outlet, but an essential element to my processing, learning, growing, and even teaching. All 5 in fact, talked about how words carry weight and importance and are a gift.

So why did I stop writing? I'll be honest, fear is a big one. Fear and confusion. I've worked through some things in the past 2 years that I'll probably get into in the future. One being anxiety attacks caused by stuffing so much internally rather than dealing with it. I have felt super messy. As I described recently, I feel like my entire world is a snowglobe, and someone has just picked it up and shaken it so hard that everything is still spinning and I don't know what's up or down or right or true anymore. But I'm learning and trusting. Learning to trust God again and more fully. So my words need to come again. With them probably fear I need to battle of not getting it all right or being misunderstood. This time I think that's not the point though. I truly choose to believe God's gifted me with words, and I need to use them. For myself, and for others. I pray my meager offerings here will be a blessing not just to my own soul, but to yours.

So here I am. Beth. Wife of almost 14 years, Momma to 4 living kiddos, now ages 2-10. A student again. A bit lost and not sure of the future. But firmly planted again on the one who's always been my foundation. God is my first love, and the lover of my soul. I pray He is evident in all I say and do.

Thanks for hanging out with me, I think you can "subscribe" or some thing to never miss a post. :) I love conversation, so I'd love comments too. Let's see where God takes us.