A New Chapter

New Blog. First Blog Post. So much pressure. Will it be witty? Serious? Short and sweet? Long and theoretical? Boring? Challenging?

I created this blog today. There was nothing wrong with my old blog. I liked the layout and the design. It was easy to navigate, easy to create new posts and easy to follow posts that I liked. It was, however, too easy to read back over old posts and become discouraged. The Art of Transparency had its time and place to shine. It served its purpose but now I’m on a new chapter, a new page, a new book even. I’m rewriting this story. I’m “changing my stars” (yes, an ‘A Knight’s Tale’ reference, get over it. RIP Heath Ledger)

As I close the chapter on that blog, I must say that transparency really is an art. And one that I feel I can never truly master. It’s easy for me to be honest with other people. It’s decidedly more difficult to be completely honest with myself. How was I really feeling, even if it was wrong? What were the raw emotions, even if I thought I sounded foolish? I learned a great deal about my myself that was unexpected. I learned that the expectations I had of myself were honestly a lot higher than I was prepared for…a lot higher than they should have been. I learned that I was expecting myself to be perfect and bounce back from tragedy as if nothing had ever happened. I learned that I was expecting myself to be stronger than humanly possible. I was holding myself to this superhuman level of untouchable that I was literally drowning in 3 foot pool with a life vest already wrapped around me. At least looking back now, that’s what it looks like. I have all of this head knowledge of who I am in Christ. I have THE great book, the Bible, that gives me all of the ammunition to fight the spiritual warfare that we are in. I am redeemed and forgiven. There is nothing that can take away my joy and salvation. There is nothing that can strip my God of his power, might, grace and love. I, as a child of the Most High King, have already obtained the victory over death and sin by the shed blood of the perfect son of God, Jesus Christ. And there is nothing – not heartbreak, not warfare, not worldly expectations – that can take that away from me.

So this is Tales of the Untamed. I don’t know what God has in store for the next couple days, months, years, but I am surely looking forward to it.