Monday, May 25, 2015

Gift of the Blog







Blogging has been sporadic over the past four years, obviously, intermittent with writing about trips and apologizes for not writing. The apologies are all to myself because this blog has always been a gift to me primarily. I write because it helps me process, helps me remember, helps me live in an awareness of the amazing life we have.


Recently Kip traveled to Tokyo. He got to work on Monday morning and his company decided it was imperative for him to go to Japan … immediately. He hopped a plane and was there the next morning.

He has traveled a lot the past year and a half. He has been to Singapore, Australia, Turkey, Greece, Paris, Switzerland, New York City and China. He also spent a week in Detroit, but I didn’t envy that trip. It was January and below zero the whole time. Usually I have had a few weeks to prepare for him to be out of town, but this time the travel hit me a little off guard. It made me feel left behind in a way I had not in a long time.

About a year and a half ago when Kip first started traveling regularly it was difficult for me and the kids. I missed him. Our preteen son talked daily about waiting for Dad to come home. We had to save all fun activities for when Dad could be with us. After the kids went to bed I would wake up in the middle of the night listening to sounds in the house, worrying about what needed to be fixed, wondering if Kip was ok. But over time I learned to roll over, go to sleep and deal with the problems one at a time.

But this time when Kip left for Tokyo I found myself worrying again until I pulled up my old blog post about our trip to Tokyo and read the whole thing. It was medicine to a weary soul. It brought it all back and I could remember where I had been and where he was at that moment. I texted him the link and went back to sleep.


And then later I thought about what a powerful gift this blog has been to me and to him. I only blogged regularly for a short time, but those entries are like gold now.

I still write quite a bit. I have dabbled with a couple of specialty blogs, worked on a screenplay about one of my favorite historical events and tried a few attempts at Namo Wrimo (National Novel Writing Month). But most of my writing these days is journal writing.

Every morning when I get up, if I have time, I like to drink a cup of coffee on the balcony overlooking the canyon and the ocean beyond, and spend some time reading the Bible and praying. Prayers take on the form of written words and often I fill pages.

Over the past few years I have filled several journals, mostly with stream of conscious style prayers. It's here that I have worked out the pain and triumph of living free and emotionally healthy. It's here where I have written the heart-blogs entries, the ones that will never make it to the outside world. It’s here amid the misspelled words and messy handwriting that I have gotten painfully honest and experienced healing. And occasionally, very rarely actually, I will read something I have written in my journal to Kip while he is still waking up, fuzzy haired, coffee in hand.

This past weekend I read him something and he made me promise to share it on Facebook or a blog or something. I said I would and now I can't find it. I'm sure I will find it later, but in the meantime I decided I need to write and I need to blog on this blog. It's a gift I'll be glad I gave someday.

 *****

I found that little bit of my journal. It's posted here on my little side project, my inspirational, journal-style blog Like Shining Stars.