When I started this blog two years ago, I had a little tiny idea in my head. I had two little boys to take care of, and I needed a place where the words swirling in my soul could escape. I could type faster than I could journal on paper, so I chose to write when I could. Whenever a kid was asleep, whenever a movie was on, or whenever I needed to feel remotely like myself, I was typing.
I started and never really tried harder than I needed to. I took my time. I warmed up to an audience I didn’t know. I opened up about my life because it’s what I know how to do best. It’s weird: I have zero fear in vulnerability. God placed the pieces of my soul together and made vulnerability an easy one. I can reach within and find it like a familiar door in my house.
So I wrote. Never consistently, always only because I wanted to, never because I was asked to. Sometimes I would go months without it. Some weeks I would never pick up a pen and paper.
This year has been different in so many ways, and I don’t know how to explain it. I cannot pinpoint a moment in time where I realized what I needed to do and just did it. Mostly because it wasn’t me. It’s never been me. I went into 2016 thinking I could make it my best year ever, and then I just released it (no, shoved it) into God’s hands and said, “Yes. Let’s do this.”
It has been wonderful.
Weird in that I don’t know where this glory came from, because it feels like it just arrived like a sunny day. Wonderful because I know God brought it, He delivered, and then some.
The weird and the wonderful isn’t waiting for the year you turn 26 like me. It isn’t waiting for you to have kids like me, have more time like me (which isn’t true), or have everything I have. It isn’t waiting. It’s right here. This, whatever is yours, whatever God is crafting before your eyes, that’s the weird and wonderful.
I would spend a lot of time looking over my favorite bloggers’ and Instagrammers’ lives via the internet and think, “I can’t wait for that to be me. I want to be them. I want to have that. I want to preach it like they preach it.” Can I let you in on the secret? They’re not far off in front of you. Their lives are not unattainable. Even more, their lives are not the epitome of perfection. If I can be the woman to look back at those who are on this path too, this is what I would tell them:
You can preach it right there. Your audience could be one, and that is an audience worth the Gospel. You can stop reaching ahead and instead soak in the earth right under your feet and say it too: Yes. Let’s do this. What happens when we stop looking at everyone else with longing eyes and thinking we are not who God says we are? What do you think happens? I think you already know.
The weird happens. The wonderful. The things that don’t seem to make sense, and you start looking around and realize God is working, because you’re giving Him free reign. Your eyes are fixed on heaven, and don’t think I’m lying about that. The purpose of everything shifts to glory, and you can see your way. It doesn’t have to be clear, you just have to believe it’s there. The wonderful arrives, and you realize that this is all God, this is all His glory, and you get to relish in it.
God is doing something right here on Soul Strings. Most of me is looking around thinking, What? Surely this isn’t happening right now?! because it’s weird and wonderful. I’ve got my eyes up, gaze transfixed, path in front of me. I can’t see a thing, and you best believe I’m still running.
JANELLE DELAGRANGE 