Stunned

If you have read this blog much at all since its inception in the spring of 2010, you have probably noticed that I don't always have enough time for it. Sometimes, when life gets especially busy or full (or perhaps when life is just normal), I allow my joy of writing to sit on the back burner. It isn't that I want to ignore the thoughts in my head, it's just that many a day I cannot possibly find the crack of time in which to organize those thoughts and put them on paper, er, I mean, keyboard.

In a perfect world, my kids would be quieter. They would keep the house a tad more tidy. They would get straight A's, help each other, and study the Bible when they had nothing left to do. As a result, I would have time to do more of the Bible study that I crave, I'd wander gracefully through a clean house, and I'd blog every day. Aaaaah, the perfect world.

NOT. (I know full well that there is no such thing as a perfect world here on this earth. It's just a fun little delusion of mine to pass the time while I pick up yet another mess.)

Anyway, my point is that when life is life--a completely zany string of events at the end of which I barely have the energy to brush my teeth, let alone compose a blog post, and since the blog post about which I may have been thinking about at noon is long gone anyway--it is all too easy for me to just ignore the blog. To ignore the thrill I have at expressing myself through the written word. To ignore the desire I have to inspire someone else. To wonder if I should be blogging at all.

Isn't that how the enemy works, though? We find something in this life that we really love, something that we believe can bring glory to God and possibly even joy to someone else, so we go after it. And we are exhilarated until we hit one measly road block, which is bound to happen, but then he swoops in. That scaly, slimy, slithering meanie worms his way into our mind and starts spewing lies like venom. who do you think you are, trying something like that? do you really think you have time for that?? you are a nobody. go back to that sick and wash another dish!

Or something like that.

That battle between desire and time, between inspiration and condemnation, between longings of the heart and lusts of the flesh, has been my battle for nearly a year now. I have soared on the eagle's wings of inspiration, only to crash land in a pile of stinky laundry. I have prayed and wrestled, and lately, I've even fasted, hoping for the clear direction that I believe should be following me around as a blogger. And every time I have no more time, I doubt and wonder.

So it was that one day last week, in the midst of my self-doubting state, that I was looking at all the behind-the-scenes settings for the technical aspects of the blog site, and I saw a tab called "stats". How it is that in nearly a year I had never clicked on it is beyond me, but nevertheless, I had not, and so I did. And I was stunned.

Did you know that my blog has had over 2,200 hits in less than a year? That's pretty cool! And it excited me quite a little bit until I looked at the map that also sits on the stats page. It was at this moment that I went from excited to stunned. My humble little blog, written from my humble little house, in the middle of my humble little life, has been read by people all over the world!! Here is a list of some of the countries that have checked in to read about a Nut:

United States
Russia
Netherlands
China
Canada
Taiwan
Germany
United Arab Emirates
Spain
Latvia
Kenya
United Kingdom
Ireland
Jamaica

And so it is that I am completely stunned. God is allowing an amazing thing to happen to an ordinary person, and I still cannot believe it. I keep clicking on that feature and whispering "Really, Lord? Really?! You have allowed me to speak beyond my borders??"

I will not pretend for one second to know what the good Lord has in mind for me or this blog or my husband or my children or today or tomorrow or next week, but I do know that for now, I am inspired. I want to write, and I want to trust God to help me raise these children well and get the house cleaned.

He stuns me. I think I'll go tap dance on a snake.