Okay ladies,
I know all of us can be sensitive to blogs, commenting, emails, etc. I am right there with ya! The other day I truly felt led to send someone an email via their blog and it was only a couple of lines but just a word of admiration and how this blogger inspired me. I know how much I appreciate those emails so I like to do the same for others when I feel led to do so. Well, guess what? He/she never responded. Oh well. I've even been taken off some one's sidebar. :) My comments have been deleted, my link has been removed and now I have had an email ignored. Oh well. We are all strangers in this blogging world and we are not going to agree with one another or even like one another so I try not to let blogging issues hurt my feelings. I've heard a lot of people being hurt through blogging and I think it's gotten a little ridiculous. We are strangers. We don't owe anything to bloggers and our readers don't own us anything either, except maybe respect.
Blogs are great way to make our lives and ourselves seem like we have it all together. That's one of my big pet peeves because the "real" life stuff is the good stuff. We all have a tone to our blogs and sometimes the tone to certain posts I read are kind of haughty or snobby or sometimes they are posts written that I feel need to be more thought out in private, not for the world to see. The problem with blogs is this, we feel we have a right to be honest or a right to be "real" or a right to be fake because it's OUR blog. I have felt this way and defended my blog BIG TIME over this! But I've kind of changed my mind on that recently and that is why I chose to delete my last post regarding families. I think my blogging and the content of my blogging changed when I realized that my husband and I are church planters and the people I am trying to reach. If I am only writing about my struggles and only writing in a devotion type format, I feel like I am limiting myself to one person, the Christian. Honestly, I really feel set free from so much religion from my past and I feel set free from a mindset that was so legalistic. Just a couple of weeks ago I painted a Halloween Canvas that had a ghost on it. A few years ago, I would have felt that the ghost would be inappropriate. When I was a kid, we never thought twice. We made our porch as scary as possible! And the other day my friend Heidi told me that her son wanted to be a ghost for Halloween. She said, "That will be an easy, cheap costume." Do you know how great I feel being able to not worry about offending my fellow Christian?! I can be me! I can go to a Haunted House for Halloween (I love Haunted Houses), I can make monster cupcakes and ghost cookies! Praise the Lord!
I've changed, my blog has changed and what I believe has changed. My theology has not changed, but my mindset has. I'm learning more about the Bible than I ever have in my life. I have a Pastor that can teach the Bible in the most challenging way I have ever heard. I can honestly say that I have never been this close to the Lord as I am right now. The freedom I feel is amazing!
All of that to say, my blog post on family was not appropriate. First of all, our church is well known in the community and our Pastor has a blog and he links me. I'm also leading worship in a few weeks for another well known, established church in the community and I don't think its' appropriate for me to reveal so much. It's funny that I am saying this because I so disagreed with this mindset when I moved here. It's not that I cannot be real or transparent but i would like to be able to reach those people that may google our church or google our pastor and for God to be able to use me without venting all of my crap on a blog. Some stuff needs to be said in my prayer closet (I don't mean that literally, although I do sometimes pray in my walk in closet). I deleted the post because I did not feel it matched up with where I'm at right now. I also deleted the blog because the comments were others sharing experiences with their own families and their husband's family and if our family members saw that, it would hurt them deeply. I do not wish to hurt them deeply or hurt them at all. It was my bad.
So in response to many emails I have received over the last few months about my blog posts, in response to me deleting comments, in response to me writing about baking or silly stuff instead of writing about Jesus, all is well with Amanda. I'm not mad at anyone, I'm not offended and I'm still a sold out believer. But, I'm not the same Amanda as I was when I wrote in Far More Than Rubies or Something Beautiful. I've changed, I will continue to change and those of you that are on board with my vision, I hope you will continue to read. If you don't agree with my celebration of Halloween or my views on church or whatever else, I understand my blog being taken off your sidebar or google reader. I am so blessed to have people out there that want to read my blog. It truly amazes me! :)
(Just a little something I wanted to add. I've been thinking a lot about my words on this blog and the content. Sometimes I read blogs and I think about how anyone could read what they have written. We think we are safe because we don't share our last name or we have not given our families our blog address but I think we have a duty to be very careful and watch those words that we type. Maybe even sit on them a few days or write it in our journal instead of the world wide web. I think we can be transparent and "real" but I think there is a balance.)
