I’ve caved.

I’ve given in.  After years of resistance, I’m blogging.  After all, I’m a writer and I adore my office.  Why wouldn’t I want to sit in here every morning and tap you or me a note of inspiration?

Daily I peer beyond the flickering candle through second story windows four in a row, see the sky blurring blue to white.  Daily I look across my office to a wall painting of Jesus and seek More of Him.  Daily I search the tender pages of the written Word for truth that propels, sets free, sets me straight and right.  Oh how I need this daily (my family can testify!)

But these moments have been private.  For diaries and books.  Long, polished, carefully crafted books.  I just finished my fourth book in two years, two days ago.  So why blog now?  Lord knows I have better things to do, like clean out my closets.

Writers have to write, like runners have to run, and if I don’t write, I’ll get lost in the closets and not know who I am when I come out. I must have a place to be authentic. 

Authenticity is dangerous freedom; you can’t sell it; can’t buy it; you can only BE it.

So instead of calling this a “blog,” which would trip me up with approval ratings, I’m calling it Jen’s Journal.  If I call it a journal, I’ll write in it without need for anything but to draw the real longhand, seek heart and soul direction, and put the period at Inspired.

Inspiration for today:  That’s the “Why.”

It’s Why I sit on my porch sipping coffee and thumbing tender pages writ by man, breath of God.  It’s the Why for prayer at sunrise and begging knees under coal black sky.  And it’s the only Why I’m keeping this journal — for you, your mother, sister, friend, brother, son, dad, husband, daughter, granddaughter.

I’m coming out of books and Bibles and closets for a single purpose:  to inspire you for More.  Ann Voskamp says we writers hang in the balance between the desire to be completely hidden and the aching need to communicate.  Therein lies the blog:  we hide whilst we speak.  Jammies, slippers, cup of coffee twice warmed, within us rests the possibility for More.  Through the online journal, we can reach boys imprisoned by sin.  A girl sexting.  A mother longing.  A father waiting.  A grandma praying.  An aunt hoping.

So why blog?  To inspire you for a life of More.  For this, I cave.

Curious this bending.  Years of refusal behind, a sapling blown hard by wind of culture, my trunk not too thick to withstand shaping, I blog.  Journal, better said.

There always requires a Why for what we do; what is your Why?

For no one does anything by rote or forced habit without the Why.

I’ve found my Why, and so will you.

For now I hold dear this view of wispy green trees over mirrored sky.  I’ll blog because I care about you and the people both you and I love. And I want to remind them, you, me, of all the ways we are Made for More.

When I’m done each day, I’ll love on my husband and kids and clean closets too.  And at day’s end, I’ll rest my head on my pillow knowing I didn’t lose who I was — that in every which way, I lived my Why.

How can you make time for your Why?  Can you forge some regular room in your life for the things that make you feel alive?  Can you tap into your gifts and fan them into flame?  How can you live like you are more than a blogger, more than a runner, more than a conqueror?  What does More look like for you?

In Truth,