Be Careful of What You Wish For
I’m fine.
Really.
I’m fine as in F.I.N.E. Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and exhausted. It all started when I attended my first writer’s conference – Write-To-Publish. It was eye opening, fun, overwhelming, productive, and informative- I learned so much. And I was motivated to put into practice what I had learned. I was encouraged to create a platform on social media in an effort to help market my book: Two Sides to a Moment, A Journey through Medical Adversities that both Press Us and Bless Us.
I am nothing if not goal oriented. I started out with such eager, naive enthusiasm and quickly found myself embroiled in a battle with my new website. I am in a foreign country, not knowing the language or even the culture of this new place called social media. I am bruised and confused wondering “Lord, how did I get here? I don’t want to write a blog, tweet, Instagram, or Facebook. I just want to publish my book!
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a writer. I shared this with an author friend of the family. She said “Loretta, write what you know.” But at 10 years old – What did I know? Nevertheless, I began writing poems. Writing poetry is what got me through high school. Teachers thought I was oh, so sweet and good in class. If they only knew I was either doing the homework from the class before or writing poems about whatever caught my fancy. In college, I majored in English and even took a Creative Writing class where the professor suggested I choose another career. So I did. I majored in life: working, meeting and marrying my soul mate and raising a child. I forgot about writing – it was too hard, I wasn’t good enough, I didn’t have anything to write about. Besides, it was just a childhood dream, right?
Flash forward a couple dozen years and I found myself with a plethora of experiences relating to medical issues: mine, my family, and my friends. With those experiences came the stories. Survival stories, really. The tears and the triumphs, the laughter and the losses, all began to pour out of me and with each one there was a healing either for me or those around me. By no means was it an easy journey and I have the scars to prove it. But along the way I have found pockets of wisdom and moments of sanity from the other side of that journey to the message and purpose God has for me.
So here I am, friends, writing my first blog. It’s not lost on me that this journey into social media is nothing more than another medical moment in my life. I don’t know a thing about it and I’m scared. But I know I can overcome this with God’s help and guidance. I have armed myself with Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I enter this new alternate universe knowing I am where God wants me to be right now- apparently on a website blogging!
Hopefully, with patient readers (pun intended), it is my desire that you will find this website a blessing to lessen your stressing.