Not a pattern I'd like to maintain.

I am not digging this pattern I have set up of only blogging once every 3-7 days. Not at all. I'm going to work on that. Just as soon as my life slows down.

I have been feeling like Melissa. Just so much to say.....and then where does the time go? I never seem to make it over here to say it. I guess I've just been focused on other things and trying to catch up with things that go undone in my free time. This blog is one of them.

While my mom was here after Roan was born she asked me about blogs. She asked me why people have them. She explained that, while she LOVES reading mine (right, Mom?), she just doesn't understand why people would feel the need to write about what they made for dinner, what they grew in their garden, who they went to lunch with, or why they don't like certain child-rearing philosophies. She said that she would feel a bit arrogant or boastful to assume that someone would be that interested.

Well, maybe I am. But, and I told her this too, it's a way for me to connect. A way for others, like me, or maybe not so much like me, to share in my life, my joys, my sorrows, my fears, my faith, my family, my vocation. To share. To give advice and take it. To be supportive and for me to reciprocate. For me to connect.  So, when I feel "obligated" to blog, what's usually deeper is that I miss the connection. Even though it's online, it's a connection. Strange, I know, but valid nonetheless. Online friends and "in person" friends. They are friends. Put there by God so that we may grow and learn; so that we may give something of ourselves. Isn't that what friendship is?

When I read from so many others like me, doing what I'm doing, raising the kind of family I'm trying to raise, striving to have the kind of marriage I'm trying to have, to be the kind of wife and mother I am trying to be, I feel inspired. I feel encouraged. I feel motivated. I feel at ease about where I am and I feel connected.

When I write about my life here, I know that I am opening it up for others to offer me advice and support, to be supported,  to find the same connection I look for, and for my family and friends to catch up on my life and get a glimpse into our everyday world. I open my life up in this way because somedays it's the only way I can. 

"We need others physically, emotionally, and intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves."- C.S. Lewis

Until I can go back to "lunching" with friends once a week and having two hour long phone conversations, I'll stick to this way of obtaining connection. It's right at my fingertips. I still have prayer group meetings, dates with my husband and lunches with friends now and again. I just have a lot less of them. For now, it seems God wants me amongst diapers I can change, tears I can wipe, hands I can hold, and minds I can help mold. God wants me here, so that I can know myself. The self he wants me to be.