The blog is a year old this week!!! March 9, 2018 was the day my website went live and my first post went out into the blogosphere.

Where has a whole year gone?  And how did I get here?

I have no idea how the last twelve months slipped by so quickly; I just know they did. As far as how I got here, as I pondered that this week, I noticed the answer to that question is deeply rooted in another question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

It isn’t a rhetorical question. And it isn’t just for third graders.

There’s more to this than how we earn a paycheck or what we enjoy in our spare time. It’s about knowing and following what’s in our heart, honoring our dreams, truly living the days we’ve been given. It’s about who and Whose we are, an ongoing process of growing, maturing, of living into and fully becoming the person we were created to be.

It’s the way my husband lived, and the way he died. With an open heart, a curious mind, a seeking spirit. Life, for him, was always about the adventure of trying the next new thing. When people asked what he did, he joked that he “hadn’t decided what he wanted to be when he grew up”, then rattled off the four or five things that were occupying his interest at the moment.

And when the end came, he was more than ready to move on, with no regrets, to the next new thing – for him, Resurrection.

I’m convinced that the Holy is in all things and uses all things, including what’s in our hearts – the hopes and dreams, the interests and fascinations, even the sackcloth and ashes – to craft the arc of our lives. That presence may at times be imperceptible; what we hoped and dreamed may not play out in a traditional way, but the Sacred is part of it all.

What did I want to be when I grew up?

I wanted to be a writer.

But life happened before I got a chance to pursue that. I met the love of my life; we got married, had kids, farmed. We became lay pastors. I got an M.A., taught college. The writing dream got shelved, tucked away in the recesses of my heart with all the other things I thought, once upon a time, that I would do, but never got around to.

But all those years, even though I wasn’t writing a book, everything I did involved writing: process papers during my lay pastor training; research papers, projects, and a thesis for my M.A. Lecture notes and course outlines when I was teaching. Sermons, worship and liturgy, newsletters, committee reports, meeting minutes and more for the nearly twenty-five years I was in ministry and active in presbytery.

In and through all those other things I was doing, God held and nurtured that writing dream in ways I wasn’t even aware of. When the time was right, I was given the opportunity to do what I’ve always wanted to do.

And here we are, celebrating a whole year of blogging.

Thank you, dear reader, for sharing this epic journey with me. Your encouragement and support, your affirmations and thoughtful comments, your presence and companionship are life and breath to me. I’m looking forward to sharing another year together. And I’m wondering…

What about you?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Is there some hope, some dream you’ve carried in your heart for as long as you can remember?

How might the Holy be calling you, through those hopes and dreams, in the desires of your heart, to fill some niche in the world – to bring beauty and joy; to encourage and affirm; to pray with and for; to companion and collaborate; to guide and lead; to nurture and tend; to blaze the trail and light the way; to be eyes and ears and helping hands; to show love and mercy?