For as long as I can remember, writing, and the reflection that it requires, has been the way that I process the world. There were diaries and journals, long, rambling notes passed in the hallways at school, and countless snail mail letters sent to my best friend in Texas. I’ve always been a writer.

I started my first blog on a whim my freshman year in college when I was meant to be studying for finals. Imagine the stream of consciousness of an 18-year-old girl, and you’ll have the general idea. In a time before content creation and social media existed, it was the way that I shared my life with the world. Unfiltered and unadorned, out there for all to see.

A couple of years after I started blogging online, I moved from Blogger to LiveJournal, where I wrote faithfully for eight years. That LiveJournal account saw me through college, seminary, the early years of marriage, and the birth of my first child.

By that time, I was writing freelance for several Christian publishers, and I decided that my online writing needed a more professional look. I set all the old Blogger and LiveJournal posts to private, bought a domain, and launched this web site. For 11 years, I showed up here on a fairly regular basis, but then, something shifted.

Looking back, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that things changed, but I know that over time, I stopped feeling free to write about my life and started feeling pressure to produce articles written to inspire. Eventually, as Muscadine Press took over more and more of my time and attention, I stopped writing on here at all.

But lately, I haven’t been feeling much like myself. When I stopped to think about what might be causing the disconnect, I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I sat down and wrote simply to reflect on and process life as I know it.

So here I am, showing up to write once more. I’m not making any promises about frequency or content, but dusting off this old blog and typing out my thoughts feels like the right thing to do, so I’m going to do it.

Until next time, grace and peace.