1000th blog post...

Well, it took almost exactly 12 years to reach this pinnacle and it only seems fitting that I'm doing so as I sit on the veranda of our hotel in Italy overlooking the beautiful city of Venice.  I'm here on vacation with my beautiful wife of 20 years enjoying a 3-month sabbatical from ministry gifted to me by the amazing church I'm privilege to pastor called Impact.  We've been in Italy for a week--on a tour of sorts--visiting Rome, Florence, and Venice...and tomorrow we head home.  So that's sorta cool...and writing this post seems in the moment to be a mix of sovereignty and serendipity. (If you're a Reformed theologian, don't get mad at me for that last sentence.  Read on, if the Lord wills.)

If you would have told me that I would write 1,000 posts on everything from rats to gnats, catnip and kryptonite, the normal...abnormal...and paranormal of my everyday life, I would have chuckled dismissively.  Reason being, I'm not good at sticking to things by nature--I've had to develop that disposition through self-control which is really one of the fruits of the Spirit so He gets most of the credit.  I admit, I'm a dreamer, a tornado chaser by nature, so holding my attention isn't easy...ask my parents/teachers growing up.

But I innately knew that I had to discipline myself to write as much as I could about the passing of time and the moments that get lost if they aren't jotted down.  In 2005 when I began to blog (it was just becoming a thing), it was a fool's dream.  I didn't know many doing it and I didn't know what I was doing...even how to start.  If you read my first blogs, you will notice that immediately.  But it didn't take long to figure out why my heart pestered me to persist and pulled me away from the pressing present to log my thoughts and feelings, trying to capture them like a fall fireflies in what can only be described as a "blog bottle". The tyranny of the urgent is a writers consummate enemy.

I've said it time and time again through the years, but my reason for writing this blog is fairly simple and straightforward.  In 2009 I explained it in a blog this way...

"I need to emphasize that this blog is not primarily for the edification of the readers, but the edification of the writer.  I must write for my own heart's sake.  I must declare my dreams.  I must verbalize my visions, else I die.  I must fight for words to hang my heart on.  

I also need to emphasize that this blog is ultimately for my daughters [and now sons].  They don't care about my thoughts and passions now in their youth, but I'm writing in hopes that when they look back into their past to make sense of their future, they will find a father's book of life to lean into and learn from.  I write for them.  

I want to collect all my writings and put it into a book for them at their high school or college graduation called, "My dad used to say..."  I know this might sound strange, but I want it to be a book that is broken up into topics so if they encounter something wondering what I think about the subject or situation and how I handled it along the way, they will be able to read my thoughts concerning the issue.  I have to assume that my views will change and mature over the years, but I think it will still be useful to them to see my growth and my limping logic, or rather theo-logic.

So if at times my thoughts seem random, lacking context, know that my vision for this is rooted in something much more macro than micro and maybe it will grant you some elasticity with which to flex around my frantic and frenetic renderings.  Thank you in advance for your merciful treatment of my heart.  And for those of you that may be merciless in the coming years, thank you for your critiquing vision that leads to my story's refining revision."

I have had years where I wrote over a hundred entries, other years where I barely wrote ten.  Even those years tell a story in my silence.  Those were some of the years where it was all I could do to harness my energy to survive the battery of all that life was throwing at me.  But if I'm honest, some of the silence months were also born out of distraction with goodness causing me to feel like taking time to write would result in me missing out.  It's called FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) in our culture of screens and devices that pull us into the the vortex of vicarious living, virtual reality.  The actual and the virtual are contending with ever-increasing fury for precious and fleeting time we've all been afforded, alloted.

So writing took place on Facebook for several years instead of this blog, but I feel it was compromised and contrived at times.  I missed the unedited (mostly anyway) version of my storytelling when I didn't feel pressured with words or whether others would find them meaningful or interesting.  Another way of saying it is that I didn't write to be read back in the day, I wrote to write.  It in itself was reason enough, meaning enough, enjoyment enough.

So to return recently over my sabbatical has been resurrecting.

I don't say this with any vainglory, but I am proud of myself.  Proud that for 12 years I've documented large portions of my inner and outer world.  Happy that when my girls were 2, 4, and 6 that I decided to begin this pilgrimage so that they can look back if they want and see what we did and what I felt about it--whether it was fun or hard in those adventurous parenting years.  They are 13, 16, and 18 currently and we have adopted 2 boys into the mix ages 5 and 7.  I hope to continue to journal the journey so that the boys, too, can turn around and see where they've come from, what they've come through even when they didn't have eyes to perceive it.

It is quite possible that very few people will read this, even my own children, but that is ok by me.  Like I said, my heart needs to write, and that is enough for me.

Here's to the next 1,000 blog entries and all adventures and misadventures along the way.  Who knows where I'll be or who I'll be when I get there.  But I pray that I will, above all, be faithful.  First, to God, Second, to my wife, Third, to my children. Fourth, to my extended family. Fifth, to the Church. And sixth, to the world...a world God loved so much that he surrended his Son.  I hope to love it "so much" with Him.

Goodspeed.

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