I have written a blog for seven years in another format. I kept that blog private and I nurtured the heck out of that thing. Over time I added a small readership. Throughout the course of almost 1,100 blog posts, I uploaded a substantial amount of family photographs and told countless tales of things that went on in our home. From parenting failures to questions and struggles in my own faith I felt comfortable hashing it all out there.

I still hold to the fact that much of what I shared there was sacred. It was a slow and steady documentation of the days of parenting young children. It was tales of late nights and lotion/baby powder/magic marker messes. It was sharing recipes that my crew enjoyed and shunned. It was in a way, me, showcasing to myself that all of those tiny, daily, liturgical moments justified and qualified and verified that what I was doing all throughout my early thirties mattered. I was making an imprint on the people in my home. And I opened it up to our community of extended family members and friends so that they, too, could share in those moments.

But as my children have grown up and let’s face it, as I have grown up the tenor and tone of that space changed. It just did. And I found that my voice as a mother, a woman, a wife, a Christian, still needed a place to sound-off and vent and share and make sense of this life. I needed then and still need now a place to process my life as a Christ-follower. I needed then and still need now a place to reframe the day-to-day events of my life and see the larger, greater picture of the story God is writing in my life.

I often use metaphors of God as an Artist making his masterpieces. Or I call him an Author writing our stories. But it’s true. When I take the time to sit back and reflect on what He’s doing all around us I can see the beauty and craftsmanship and detail in His work. I do this through almost daily writing. When I don’t process this, my outlook on life gets a little hazy, a little grouchy, and a little ungrateful.

But then again, I struggle with this writing and especially with this format of writing, blogging. With a barrage of social media, life just feels like everywhere we turn, we are self-promoting through our Twitter feeds, our Facebook updates, our beautifully filtered Instagram images and especially our blogs. We put up the wittiest, most precious, most perfect from our days and wait in anticipation for re-tweets, likes, comments and affirmation.

So I share words and stories in sincere hopes that you are encouraged in ways that let you know that life isn’t about a perfectly scripted Facebook status, or a strategically framed Instagram photograph. I share words and stories (and struggles) not to shine a light on myself or my family but to shine an even bigger light on Jesus Christ, “the author and perfecter of my faith.” {Hebrews 12:2} I share words and stories ultimately to help myself understand and know Christ more and make Him known.

As God writes the story of our life (my family’s) and specifically the story of my life, I want to make much of Jesus. And I want to use this platform as a means for my own questioning of how I do that in a world that wants to make much of self.