Who Am I?

This blog is not special.  I am not naive enough to believe that many people look to it for entertainment, enlightenment, or instruction, let alone inspiration.  But it is real thoughts and feelings shared by a real person.


I try to be an encouragement to others by showing how I have been encouraged.  When I first started to blog I thought that it was something rare.  A  friend from my teens and on is an awesome writer and blogger.  I only wanted to have a forum to write and she encouraged me to blog as a means to that end.


Now I realize that just about everyone in the modern world blogs for one reason or another.  So why would anyone want to read what I write?  I'm not sure.  Quite honestly, I'm not sure who is reading this.  I mean, I look at the stats but that doesn't tell me who as much as where.  It doesn't tell me why as much as what referring website.  So what makes me think that anyone would want to read the things I write down on my computer and post online?  I don't honestly know.  So, in order to clarify my own thoughts,  I decided I would write down some things about who I am:

• I am a daughter.  

So much of my identity comes from how I perceive myself from the aspect of my childhood.  I was adopted by two amazing, regular, flawed people who loved me with an extraordinary love. My childhood was filled with interactions with the people I loved who were related to me through family, church and school.  


In this scenario I am a middle child who only wants to please everyone and not make anyone mad at me.  Following the rules has always been important to me and it is really hard for me to go against what I know or believe to be right.  Not because I am better than anyone else, but just because that is who I am.  


My aim to please gets me in trouble and relationships have been hard for me because I so want people to like me.  But I tend to be too loud or distracted and sometimes don't think before I speak.  I've always wanted desperately for my older brother to protect me and my younger sister to look up to me,  but I rarely was deserving of it.  Too often I feared what I couldn't understand and was jealous of what I imagined to be valued more than me.

• I am a Child of God

From birth I was taught about Jesus' love for me and His making salvation available to me.  In my earliest memories I loved Jesus and wanted to live for Him.  Still, even some of that was motivated by fear and wanting to be accepted by God.  Countless times during my childhood when I was afraid of being unacceptable to God I asked Him to come into my heart and save me.  Then, when I was 15 I attended a conference that changed my heart and life.  Not much changed on the surface, what people could see.  But I realized that I was a sinner and that just the fact that I held onto what I felt was my "goodness" kept me separated from God with the sin of pride.  


My walk with Jesus has had its ups and downs because of my fear and my lack of trust.  Through it all, He has been my greatest joy and the one perfect thing that I wish to pass along to my children.

• I am a wife.

All I ever desired in life was to be a wife and mom.  To me it is a calling which I am thankful to have been able to fulfill.  I married a man whom I truly barely knew when I was only 20 years old.  Marriage has been a laboratory of growth for me and I'm so thankful for the man God chose to use to refine me.  It hasn't always been easy.  In fact, at times it has been very, very hard.  But I believe that is the nature of marriage.  Two broken people relying on an unbreakable God.  We've made a lot of mistakes.  We've endured a lot of pain.  But we've had  some incredible joy that ultimately overshadows any of the bad stuff. 

• I am a mom.

My body carried another human inside me five times.  I gave birth four of those times.  My heart carried another child to the fruition of adoption in spite of my fears of traveling to a foreign country to get her.  I've made so many mistakes.  I've been so selfish.  I've done the things I swore I would never do to my kids and said the things I swore I would never say to my kids.  I am an imperfect mom who loves fiercely the ones whom God has entrusted to me.  I've been disappointed and I have been the one to disappoint.  My children will hopefully one day know the depth of my love when they experience it with their own children.

• I live with a chronic disease.

This is really so little of who I am but it affects my life every day.  I live with exhaustion and pain  much of the time but very few people who know me even the most, understand it.  It is only valuable to know about if you wonder why I tend to stay at home except to do the most important things to me.  

• I love beautiful things.

Not just stuff.  But the way a beautiful fabric feels or the way the sun shines a certain way in a window.  I have a desire to make my surroundings a wonderful place to be living.  I love fabric and paisley and color.  I love yummy food and warm fires. 

• Words matter to me.

 I feel things very deeply and words go to my very core.  If I hear a foul word spoken by someone I love, it hurts me.  Harsh words undo me.  Kind words make me glow.  I tend to use words as weapons because I feel them so incredibly powerful when directed at me that I imagine them to have power to protect me as well.  




So I guess that is why I blog.  Words define me, not just in the sense of the obvious.  They are sewn into my soul  and sometimes they have to come out and be shared.








Thanks for reading my words.  Please let me know if you enjoy them!