There's a dawn in every darkness bringing hope to you and me
From the past will come the future, what it holds a mystery
Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.
-Natalee Sleeth, Hymn of Promise
Hey y'all.
It's been a very long time. So long, in fact, that I really don't know where to start. There's no instruction manual on how to re-start a blog after many months of silence. (Yes, I googled.) During the initial week of outdoor swim practice, I was always the knobby-kneed scrawny kid who took 10 minutes to get all the way wet, shivering through the first half of the workout. But there's no gentle, toe-in-first warm up here in blog-land - either you write something or you don't. Here goes writing.
The truth is that it has been an intentional silence. I have always poured my soul out here, and I simply haven't been willing to be quite that vulnerable in such a public space. I could pretend that I'm doing fine and post funny stories about my messy house, our epic home improvement failures and adorable yet exasperating kids - and it would all be true. It would be true in the way that what we post on facebook is true, but is a carefully crafted truth. But that would not be authentic and real, and somehow that feels wrong here. Or I could be depressingly honest, and that wouldn't be any fun to read, nor would it be much fun to write. Instead I chose the silence.
But I've missed writing. There is a song in every silence.
I feel compelled to write; I want to create something. I want to find the perfect song that touches where my life is at a given moment. I want to use the perfect picture to illustrate my story, my kids' stories. I have more seriously considered writing a book, and maybe someday I will actually do it. (It's tentatively titled "You Picked Your Nose With Your Painty Finger and Now You Have Paint Up Your Nose." Think an editor will go for that? If only it would fit on the spine...) But until I figure out the whole agent/manuscript/editor/publisher gig, I will get back to writing here. It's a start.
The first step is always the hardest.
But mostly, I missed y'all.
