Blogging is a funny thing.

   A choosing of sorts, to be vulnerable.  To place oneself out in the open, away from the shelter and protection of hiding, exposed and open, to simply say "This is me."  This is it, this is what makes me, me.

A treacherous, delicate thing, really.

   It seems strange that I (or anyone else for that matter) would ever want to do it.  But then when I'm not writing on this blog, in this space online that I call my own, I still write inside.  Inside my head, inside my heart, inside my deepest, darkest places.....I write, spilling the thoughts and letters and words and phrases and they start to pile up and get all jumbled together until I can't seem to sort them out anymore.  So in that sense, writing some of them out on here helps, somehow.

I think we all just don't want to be misunderstood.
   Isn't that one of the deepest cries of humanity?  Would someone just please understand me?  Know me truly and deeply and without pretense or pretending?  And so my hope is that in this small space, I would not come across as pessimistic or ungrateful or bitter or anything else I may seem at times.  But that I would just come across as me.  Because while I may feel one or all of those things at times, that's not WHO I am.  Or at least, it's not who I want to be.

  However, I firmly hold to the opinion that it is ok to feel those things.  It has to be.  If it's not ok to feel some of the things that I feel, than I don't want to be "ok".  Yet at the same time, I don't want to diminish the glory.  You know?  Somehow take away from what God has done and is doing in our lives.  I want to be thankful.  Somehow Ann Voskamp can be whimsical and melancholy and borderline depressing and yet all the while shining a beautiful reflection of her Creator.  Well I guess I haven't figured out that fragile balance yet.  Sometimes the words just come out of me hot and heavy and ugly and trust me, you ain't seen the HALF of it on this blog.  I wouldn't be that careless.

   I guess I'm a little bit jealous of people like A.V.  who have somehow discovered the secret to spilling their soul-words without making everyone hide their children and head for the basement.  How do they do that?  Be open and real and honest and raw without being a little bit terrifying?  Would someone just tell me how that is done?

   I digress.  And I've never been completely sure what it means to "digress" but it seems the only appropriate way to end a tirade, so..................