I've talked about starting a new blog for forever, but I just didn't have the courage to let this one go.
I still haven't figured out how to completely walk away as I don't want to let my life chronicled here for the past 8 years to be lost forever. I think I will post once a month or so here just to keep this alive for all the work and writing and photos and memories.
But, this is my big announcement. I am finally strong enough to say goodbye. It's a big deal. This place has been my refuge in many many hard times. My readers have been there for me giving me the will to go on. I am bawling as I write this. Truthfully, bawling. I'm going to miss you all. I'm going to miss this support system. I'm going to miss this blog and it's worn torn pages, like a big old journal I've hauled with me everywhere I go. I feel like I am throwing it into a bonfire or onto the shelves of a daycare full of toddlers.
But, God has wisely and ever so gently worked with me to help me to NOT need the approval of others.
Yeah, I'm still a work in progress and some days I do better than others. Today is a struggling day, but I have to do it, it's the right thing.
I am letting go of this blog in the hopes that I will love myself enough, and look to God for what I really need, what none of you really could have given me all along.
I have started a new blog. I need an outlet in this next phase in my journey and I am the kind of learner that learns best by writing. I have debated and even wrestled with the Lord over the new blog. I can't let it become a crutch. I can't want it to be HUGE, like I've done all along here. The world's approval does not matter. The only thing that matters is if I am living true to my God and what He asks of me.
Right now what He has asked of me is to be home with my kids. Like I said in the last post I am struggling with His request. I have trust issues. I have resentment. I have pride.
My new blog is the place where I will focus on learning to love being at home because that is what He has asked of me, and even though I have been parenting for 14 years I still have a lot to learn. So much to learn.
I can't market it. God has told me that much. I can't write for the approval of others.This is something I will have to battle within myself every day, but in the long run I know it will give me more peace. The only way I can healthfully blog is if I am using it as a measuring stick for my approval or as a place to solidify what I learn. So, I won't have comments enabled on my new blog.
I hesitate to even share the new place with you, but really, I won't even know if you are reading, and I hope I get to a place where I won't care if you are. Not that I won't care about you and our friendship, but that I won't care if I blog for a million people or just me. I want to blog for me and keep it between me and my God because He's bigger than a million people.
Here it is. Follow me on my journey if you'd like.
I hope it will be full of profound wisdom, straight from God.
If you aren't into that kind of thing, I hope you will have a change of heart.
Not because I need you at my new place online, but because God needs you, and someday answering to Him is all that is going to matter.
Wow. This is bitter sweet. It feels like a funeral and a baby being born at the same time.
Thank you all for you friendships. Thank you for your support.
6 comments:
Wow, Alice, wow. I'm excited to read the new blog. All the thoughts and reasoning you've walked through here sound so good and peaceful and freeing. Good luck!
I 100% get this. I blog because it is easier than writing in my journal and my parents like to see the pictures. I hope my friends read my posts when they get the chance, as I enjoy reading their posts. But I often stress out about writing. I am not always true to myself because I am afraid of offending someone else or feel that it is too personal to share. Then I wonder if I should even blog at all because it is not showing an accurate picture of our life as I would like it to. I have though about going private many times so that I could be more open with what I say but then I like the feeling that someone is atleast occassionally reading what I write. ha. It is hard to explain. Anyways. Good luck with your new blog and I will be reading!
I just read a great review on this book. It might be worth checking out????
Happier at Home: Kiss More, Jump More, Abandon a Project, Read Samuel Johnson, and My Other Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life
by Gretchen Rubin
Here's what Amazon says about it:
One Sunday afternoon, as she unloaded the dishwasher, Gretchen Rubin felt hit by a wave of homesickness. Homesick—why? She was standing right in her own kitchen. She felt homesick, she realized, with love for home itself. “Of all the elements of a happy life,” she thought, “my home is the most important.” In a flash, she decided to undertake a new happiness project, and this time, to focus on home.
Alice ~ Have you ever considered it possible that your religion creates the unrealistic expectations you have of yourself and others? LG will never (and no human man can) live up to the arbitrary standards of the Mormon church. Stop judging him by those. He is still married to you, provides for your family, and loves your girls. What more do you want? Drop the Peter Perfect Priesthood holder fantasy and you will find that LG by himself is pretty damn good.
Then, let go of those standards for yourself. Lo and behold, you will still find that you are a good, moral person without the pressure. The pressure of unrealistic expectations for yourself and LG is what is causing the friction in your marriage. LG is not failing. You are not failing. The church has failed you.
The church sets you up to feel like you are always failing so that you will feel weak and therefore "need" what the church offers. That only feeds the organization, not you or your marriage. If you feel you are "broken" you will "pay, pray and obey" more until you actually are.
Stop and look at that reality. I watch you struggle through your blogs when the answer is so easy. You can still be a participating member of your church, but stop letting them control you and tell you how to view yourself and your husband. Only a very small percentage of human beings will ever fit the "straight and narrow way" that the LDS church prescribes. Most of us fall gloriously outside that norm.
Give yourself a break, Alice. Stop comparing yourself to a fantasy. It will only make you miserable. There is so much beauty to life outside the bounds the church has set. If God loves you he will want you to truly figure out who you are and find your own path. A heaven full of automatons would be pretty boring...
Let go. Relax. LG is fine. So are you. It's going to be okay.
Packers and Movers in Gurgaon
very interesting, good post
Anonymous,
I can't say that I will miss you. You're wrong. The end.
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