i started this blog one year ago.

it has given new life and fun to my long loved practice of journaling. i have been filling little bitty notebooks with the songs of my heart since i was ten or eleven. the first one starts out with something like…i am writing this journal so that i can one day read it and know how very difficult it is to be a young girl with a mother who does not understand me at all.

to one day be a better mother than my own. that’s why i first started journaling.

over the years the reasons for writing my thoughts and prayers down have changed with every passing page. i have boxes filled with them. memories from crazy adolescent days. tears i cried throughout college. dreams i dreamed for our family. hopes for love dashed and fulfilled. prayers for my babies.

there is nothing earth shattering on the pages of those notebooks (or on the posts of this weblog), but somehow the practice of writing it down has preserved my sanity over the years. in one way or another.

the great thing about the blog is that i can actually find that wonderful quote i once put down. when i try to find a memory in one of those boxes of journals, inevitably i end up reading through a whole year or two of my life, which results in laughter and tears, simultaneously. and there is joy in that kind of journaling as well, just no search engines.

and of course blogging is different because i am writing for an audience. which is its own kind of different. sometimes stifling and sometimes very rewarding. sometimes both at the same time. overall it’s been super fun. a great outlet for me as a mom of a toddler and varying homeschoolers in the last year. so i thank you for reading and commenting and emailing and making me think that it is something worth doing.