HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG!

If you’re just now joining this blog family, it may seem a little silly, but to those of you who have followed this journey over the past year, I think you understand why I’m truly celebrating.  Today marks one year of blogging at karipatterson.com.  So why is this so significant?

The Journey

About 13 months ago, my husband, son and I left our wonderful home, friends, and job to move in with my parents so that we could finish seminary.  It had become impossible for Jeff to work full-time, go to school, commute 1.5 hours each way to class, and then even begin to think about being a husband and father.  I knew there was no way I could finish my last full-time semester of classes without lots of childcare, and the idea of driving 1.5 hours to my parents’ house, dropping Dutch off, then driving another hour to school, take classes all day, then retrace the 2.5 hour drive again was just crazy.  So, we decided to take a leap of faith and rent out our house, sell 3/4 of everything we owned, saving only very special or sentimental furniture and belongings, and moved into my parents’ house.  We would then just live on our savings, with little part-time jobs as TAs and tutors to help with tuituion costs, and pray that down the road God would open up another door to walk through when the time came.  At that time we figured Jeff had 2 years left, but we only had enough savings to live on for one year…so we decided to go for it for a year, and then pray that God would open up a door for him to work, hopefully in a ministry setting, and finish school, since by then I would be done (except for one class) and we wouldn’t have the same time stressers. 

The Challenge

A month into this new situation, Jeff realized that without having a home, I would soon go crazy. As a wife and mom, my home is my outlet, my identity, it’s how I express my heart and love and creativity.  I loved being a stay-at-home mom (and student) and thrived on having people over, opening up our home, and practicing hospitality.  I loved finding creative and inexpensive ways to decorate, organize, and beautify our home.  I was passionate about creating a calm, serene haven for Jeff, where we could hide away from the world and be a family.  I knew this was risky, letting go of all this, knowing that it was probably a pretty big part of my mental health, but I really felt like this was what God had for us.  So Jeff, in his loving wisdom, spent $13 and bought me karipatterson.com, insisting that I take all my creative energies that I used to pour into home, and channel them into writing, which was my first creative passion anyway.  I knew nothing about blogging (and still don’t), but it quickly became an amazing way for me to articulate my heart, share my thoughts, struggles, insights, failures, and victories, and forced me to be thinking creatively. 

The Result

I wish I could say I’ve come through this past year with flying colors.  Honestly, I’ve more limped through it–failure interspersed with occasional victories.  It’s been a rough year.  And I wish I could say I’m writing from the other side now, looking back, but I’m not. I’m still in it.  We’re praying God provides a job now so we can move out and prepare for the birth of our second child.  I am still struggling with being here. I feel like I die a thousand little deaths each day, of pride, of control, of identity.  But I feel like significant things have been birthed through this blog–insights I’ll carry with me forever, stories I even hope to revise and put into book form to share with our children, raw journal entries that expose the desperate states we travel through on this journey of sanctification. 

And I’ve met so many of you.  I know this blog is still small beans, but my goal is not numbers–my goal is that through writing my own life, and prayerfully a few other lives, would be changed for His glory.  I started out averaging 2 readers per day (myself and Jeff!)…today we’re averaging 60. I share that because that makes me praise my Father for His goodness and grace, for Him providing a bridge for me, with others, while I’m stranded out here with no car, in the boonies. 🙂

And what I really want to say today is THANK YOU.  Thank you for reading, for cheering me on, for adding comments, disagreements, challenges, confirmations.  Thanks for joining me along the journey, for not throwing up your hands in disgust when I stumble, but for chugging along with me on the road.  I pray that this year is filled with God’s supernatural abundant grace on our lives–that we’d be changed into His likeness, from strength to strength.  Thanks for reading.