Monday, October 22, 2012

Lessons I'm Learning As A Blogger

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."
 - Helen Keller

With all the personal analysis that's been going on here on my blog, I'm learning a lot about myself. I hope you are too (learning about you - learning about me might give you a good laugh, but it probably won't help in your daily life). If you missed any of the posts on Being The Best Version of You, here they are.

  1. Struggling to Figure Out Who I Am
  2. I'm Tooting My Own Horn, and I'm Proud Of It!
  3. Putting It All Out There Today - Please Be Kind
  4. Using the Pieces to See The Whole Picture
Today is going in a similar direction with me revealing too much about myself in an attempt to encourage you. I want to share a little bit of what I've been learning as a blogger.

The image from my first post
I started this blog on May 27, 2012. Here's my very first post, in case you missed it. I started blogging because I was convinced that I could be an encouragement to women out there. I was going to help them realize that they are special and have something to offer. I was going to inspire them to be the women that God made them to be. Then they would be the mother/wife/woman they were designed to be. I had big plans.

Here's where it gets good. In all the self-analysis posts I've done recently, I'm the one who has learned, grown, and been encouraged. I'm the one who is learning how to be the woman God made me to be. I set out to help others grow (that sounds so vain!), and instead, I'm growing. And I didn't even know I needed to grow and change (I told you I can be full of myself)!
This is me - being vain

When I realized that this blogging stuff was working to change me (and when I got comments that it was encouraging others), I put my whole heart into it. I started making it a major priority. Guess what happened - my calendar magically filled up. I totally ran out of time to play blogger. I had to put it aside to focus on real life. So I adjusted my priorities and put blogging back where it belonged - until the next time.

It seems to be a vicious cycle with me. I get excited about the blog world, elevate it above the truly important things in my life (marriage, parenting, etc), and then something happens to keep me from blogging for a time. I see the wake-up call for what it is and put things back in order. One of these days I'm hoping that I'll just keep blogging where it belongs and spare myself the lesson. But until I wise up, you can use any weird silence on my blog as a message that I got my priorities out of line again.

Where I am going with all this? I'm hoping that if I tell you about the lessons I'm learning, I'll save you some time and energy.

Here's the sum up.

  • Attempting to help others is a good thing. But I need to be ready to see myself honestly and grow and change along the way. 
  • A good thing, in the wrong place on the priority list, can become a bad thing. {<-Tweet This} And if I don't keep it in the right perspective, God steps in and does it for me.

What about you? What experience has brought you growth and change when you least expected it? Is there anything you tend to mis-prioritize without realizing it? Don't leave me out on this limb all alone :-)



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