What (in)courages me?

Whew.

Isn’t that a loaded question?

As I sit here on a beautiful Sunday morning, home sick from church, I’m overwhelmed by this: there is an enormous place in my heart filled up by women I don’t “know,” per se, but whom my soul recognized in an instant.

And that is what (in)courages me most, in the season of life that I am in.

Let me see if I can explain…..

I didn’t know what a blog was until I had a reason to start my own.  My only intention was to have a place where I could easily convey my pregnancy updates to concerned family and friends.  And for the longest time, that is all it was.  But by the time my “modified bedrest” turned into “hospitalized bedrest" and I had ample time on my hands to do nothing but write, I found that this blog became a place for me to just be.  To talk about my feelings and dreams and hopes and fears and memories and, in general, my take on my everyday life.

I love going back to earlier blog posts and reading my words – reliving the moments.  And when I realized that I would keep writing even if no one else ever came back to check on me,  I knew that I had reached a critical point in the life of any blogger: write first for oneself.

But.

(and isn’t there always a “but”?)

As I began to receive more and more comments on my ramblings, and as I began to visit the blogs of those comments, and then the blogs of their commenters, and so on and so forth….the “blogosphere” became a wonderland of people and places and lives I was able to experience in a way that only the worldwide web could deliver.

It was nothing but pure fun to peek inside other peoples’ homes, or to sigh over the adorableness of their children, or to get their take on current parenting trends – while remaining, for the most part, anonymous.

But nothing could have prepared me for the blessing in store when these “anonymous” relationships became REAL.  When a dot com became a person, with a real name (not just a url) and a real face and, in many cases, a real phone number – that I could dial!  Women my age, and older, and younger, and women who live here in Nashville, or over in North Carolina, or Oregon, or Arkansas, or California, and women who have children, and women who don’t, and women who can decorate and those who can’t, or cook, or craft, or thrift…..women who practice their faith the way I do, and those who don’t; women who are just like me, and women who aren’t…..

I can’t believe how blessed my life has been through the world of blogging.  I am doing a horrendous job of adequately portraying it, I know.  So, I’ll try to wrap it up.

What (in)courages me?

Community.  A place to be with others where I can just be ME.

And that is why I’m so excited about www.incourage.me.  It is a place where so many of us who are already friends can go hang out and just be.

Be ourselves.

Be witty.

Be real.

Be encouraged.

Are you (in)?