.It's Time.

We lived in a teeny apartment on the second floor. I had painted the miniature kitchen sunshine yellow. Her bedroom was soft green with cream pinstripes that my mom had surprised us with. I was a few weeks into this journey of motherhood. Everything had been planned, as it always was back then. We became parents when we decided to - not before, not after. We were blissfully naive and self-assured, and we were young, so young. A decade has risen and fallen since that moment in the teeny apartment, when my fingers first danced over a keyboard and created a space on the web for my words. It was at the dawning of social media; I had not yet succumbed to Facebook, but the blog world beckoned me. While everything had been carefully orchestrated, her birth was a startling jolt into reality, as nothing about it went according to plan. Almost losing my firstborn in her first moments on earth, lit something inside of me that may not have ever been otherwise ignited. Every breath, every cry every hiccup and milestone was a gift that, had those first moments gone slightly differently, I might never have known. I embraced motherhood with an intensity that I had never known. That made me not want to miss a thing and to take joy in the small things. Looking back, it really was a rather exquisite way to enter motherhood. So that first little blog was almost all about her, my Cadence. I weaved stories and photos together about those first years, and then we chose to birth another, and soon after, I needed to expand my blog to include him and our changing family. And I landed right here. Almost seven years have past right here.

But I am not the same person who launched a blog, with her infant daughter, in a bouncy seat at her feet, in that teeny apartment once upon a time.

I have been thinking a lot about writing lately. I miss the way that I used to work through thoughts as my fingers flew over letters. I miss capturing moments, and finding the extraordinary right inside the ordinary. I want to get back to that, but I have been hesitant. In some ways I don't know how to start again. When I go through the catalogue of old blog posts here, I cringe. Some part of me wants to delete them all away and forget how self-righteous and bitter I became in my journey. There is an arrogance that I read into those words from my younger self, a surety; one that I no longer feel. There is passion and fire, and there is icy coldness. I voiced a tiny bit of this feeling to Jim today. I told him that I wanted to start all over again, in a new space, because the truth is, I was born to write, but this space doesn't seem to fit me anymore. He urged me to stay and to pick back up my writing. As I have thought about it, I realized that while I have gone through a metamorphosis of sorts, it's all a part of my story. Even those embarrassing posts, where my passion was most definitely misguided, has shaped the woman who sits on the other side of this screen today. I cannot delete my story. I can only do better when I know better.

So much has changed inside of me. I have been bruised and battered. I am more courageous and more fearful. I am louder and quieter. I am determined and unsure. I am growing older, time is passing me by, my children are no longer babies. I have spent a year on the mission field in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and stripped of all that was familiar, I understand who I am better than ever before. But I am also still discovering me, and who God desires me to be. I am not yet old, but I am no longer young. Friendships are more important to me than maybe ever before, but this year I experienced the ugly side of a fraudulent one that makes me cower from women and put up thick, heavy walls. I am guarded, and I am wary, and I need God to show me something different. It also made me seek out grace and forgiveness with an old friendship that I had single-handedly damaged in the past. But some things don't change - my desire to follow Jesus - even though that desire surely manifests itself in new, different ways, my love for my husband who gets me on a level that nobody else could, my absolute joy in being a mom and raising these children, and my penchant for writing, cooking, wearing gobs of mascara, and drinking coffee. All of those parts of me remain intact.

So I am tentatively trying again. It's kind of scary to open up my life and heart once more in this space that holds so much, but there is just so much to share. There is still story to be told. Someone might connect with my story and find solidarity here in these words. So, I will write again, because the truth is that I love to write. There will always be better writers, but I am done struggling with that, because nobody else can tell my story. There is space for me, even if I am not the best. My grammar will drive grammarians crazy, because although I am a perfectionist, I am also a creative - especially when it comes to writing. I want to fall back in love with writing. I have never stopped writing, but the story has been muted here, it has stayed in my head or in my journals, but it never, ever stopped. I am proud of that, but now it is time....

It's time to let the story back out.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you. Maya Angelou

A few of my favorite characters in this story.

.A Moment Cherished 10 Most Read Posts of 2013.

This has been such a unique year. Sometimes I blogged through it, and sometimes I shut myself off from sharing here. As I sat down yesterday to journal through some new goals for 2014, writing appeared high on my list. I am hoping to do more, get better, and learn to take the time to share the story of my life. Our family plans to make the big move to Africa in 2014, and with that will unfold many more stories.

These are the posts from this year that had the most reads. These are the ones that you shared on facebook, pinned to Pinterest and emailed me about. Many of these posts I would have chosen as my favorite as well -my heart was spilled out in them, but some took me by surprise.

1. Dear Special Needs Mom

2. For Her 

3. An Open Letter to the Anonymous Guest 

4. Reclaiming the Bride 

5. Why Can't We All Just Get Along 

6. Gena Revisited {Ethiopian Recipes} 

7. Vision Video

8. The Truth Is 

9. A Simple Command or Is It? 

10. Rearranging my Heart and Rethinking Family First 

Thank you for always coming back here, for reading and for investing. For sharing your stories and continually encouraging me to write. I cherish this space, and I cherish you. Here's to 2014 - whatever it may bring.

.And Yet I Write.

[source]

It ebbs and flows through us all. It is a part of us. None of us can escape it, and we all love a good one. It's the link from the beginning of time, and we all live it every single day - a story. Each of us is inside one, and our one connects with his one and her one and the ultimate One. We are all story tellers, proclaiming our story with paint, with pencil, with a keyboard, with lips, with life, with the stage, with a podium, in front of a classroom, in front of our children, in churches, backyards, grocery stores, and songs. Our story is ever-changing, growing, developing, and maturing. We were born to tell our story, because the broken pieces of our story are exactly what He uses to make His story known.

For almost eight years now, I have used blogging as the biggest medium to story tell. I am discovering how many different pages I have turned in these eight years. I have been broken, side-tracked, stretched, redeemed, wronged and wrong. Looking back, some of the conclusions that I came to in telling my story, would be very different today if I were to write it again. However, we all proclaim what we know, and we tell the story from the perspective we have in that moment. We are all in a process of change. Life is not static. We cannot live out our story, and come out on the other side the exact same character as we were when we entered the story. It's not possible.

There is power in a story, but sometimes it is intimidating and exhausting to tell it. Sometimes we feel as if we are competing with all of the stories around us, and they can be so loud and so very good. Sometimes ours seems weak and unworthy, and we wonder if our voice should even be inserted into the noise. Because sometimes our voice changes, and the story that we told so boldly and so surely before has changed. So why bother, if we are only going to continue to grow in our understanding and perspective of life? Somedays I want to call it quits, and find another medium, because this one collects the changes too easy and stacks them up and makes me squirm at the me of yesterday. Did I really believe that and write that? I don't even remember those words or feelings or opinions. And yet they are all weaved into my story, and without them my story wouldn't be authentic. 

His grace redeems every broken bit of this story, every changed idea and thought, and He uses this tiny offering to mesh with someone elses story. I have seen it over and over and over. So, on the days when I want to shut the laptop, perhaps I do, and recently I have, but maybe I don't, and maybe in the broken, messed up parts of this story - when I write too certainly and heavily - maybe just maybe His mercy shrouds it and buffers it. Because I have seen these words here, ones that now I may cringe at and may not ever remember feeling so passionate about, fill up an empty place inside of  someone else. I have seen God use my inadequacies, in telling this story, in ways that only He ever could.

Every time I step away from this space, take a deep breath, reevaluate if this matters, I am gently nudged back. Every single time He brings me back, and whispers write. Just write, with all of your heart, soul, and mind. Write from your heart and from your now. Because I want to be perfected in all of Your weaknesses. Splay yourself open and write out your soul, because it is there where redemption in the brokenness will be seen. It is there where I will be seen. It's your story, and it matters, because I am writing it. I am the one changing it - and changing you. 

So, I just write. My fingers fly, my heart races. It is exhilarating  It is what I am meant to do. I was created to share in words written down and bled out on a page or a screen. They are not the most beautiful or the best. Someone else does this better. Sometimes I am sure, and sometimes I am shaky. Sometimes the story changes, and sometimes pages need to be ripped out. And yet, I write, because this is mine to share. These words are a part of me and and a part of this moment.

This is my offering, my worship, my heart.

.But Why?

Lately I have been asked a few similar questions.

Why do you blog?

Why do you take the time to put your thoughts and your family out on the internet?

Couldn't you make better use of your time?

The questions startled me, and made me ponder and pray and reevaluate, and yet again I came back to the same thoughts that I had written out a year ago under the tab on the right marked About my blog. It is good to constantly assess and to reevaluate, and I feel content and at peace with what I had written. When my purpose changes or God moves in a different direction, than I will follow. For now, here I stay, confident that this is His plan. Here is what I wrote:

A Moment Cherished started out as my little space filled with memories of my life right now - while my children are little. I wanted to remember their childhood. I wanted to remember the joys, the blessings, and even some of the trials of being a young mommy. I still want to remember that. However, God has morphed my blog into more than just that. My blog is also my story - well God's story of how He took a scared, shy girl on the adventure of a life time and how he taught me to release my control. Right now this story is resulting in bringing home a son from Ethiopia, and from there God has yet to reveal to us.

I am so glad that you stopped by. Pull up a chair, kick of your shoes, and share a cup of coffee with me. The “me” you will find is my husband's Sweetheart, my childrens' Mommy, and daughter of the King. I spend my days loving and teaching my children. I love to create by decorating my home, cooking and baking, photographing the loves of my life, or finger painting a masterpiece with my children. I steal moments with books and Ethiopian coffee. I'm knee deep in church ministry with my husband who is an associate Pastor in our church. We are passionate about missions and advocating for orphans. I am just your average house wife living an average life, but I am blessed.

My blog has always been about capturing the moments - seizing them and cherishing them – that verse, James 4:14, is the heartbeat of my blog and hopefully my life. I wanted a place to take time to see the blessings in my life, and preserve the fleeting time of childhood for my children. I want to leave a legacy for my children. I hope that some day they can look back on my blog and see how much their mommy cherished them and their sunny days of childhood.

I try not to write for an audience, or at least a human audience - my writing is always directed to an audience of One. My blog is the overflow of my heart. It’s not a business to me, it’s not a competition in readership, or a performance for my writing – it’s a bearing of my soul. I want to keep it that way. I don’t follow a schedule or someone else’s rules. I write when I am inspired to write, and I write what God lays on my heart. I try to be very attentive to His desires for my blog – for my writing. I never want to lose focus of why I write. Ultimately I write for the glory of God.

God has lain it upon my heart that He is using my blog as a ministry. During this season of my life, I feel burdened to be a full time, stay-at-home, homeschooling, mommy and homemaking wife. From this position, there are very few ministries that I feel I can give my heart to at this time, so this blog is my ministry for now. I have received countless emails and comments from women telling me that I have encouraged them in their roles as a mommy, or a homemaker, or a wife, or that their families have been convicted to respond to the the demands to care for the orphan, the poor, the widow, or the needy because of something they read here. I don't get how God can use a mousey housewife with a penchant for written words, but He does. I marvel that anyone would read my words, and that they can truly make a difference. And in and of myself they cannot, but when coupled with the power of God - well anything is possible, dear friends.I want to be careful and clear to say that it’s not about me – it’s about the One who created me. I pray that is evident to everyone who reads my blog. I don't want this blog to be about me or my family or my passions. I want it to ultimately be a reflection of the gospel and of Jesus Christ.

I pray that if you landed here you feel welcomed, comfortable in who God created you to be, and encouraged.I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to email me at anytime at amomentcherished(at)gmail(dot)com.

.Getting Back into the Groove.

I have been sporadic with my writing - my blogging lately. I have needed to as we acclimate to our new normal, but everything is going really, really well (minus the sleepless nights, but eh...). It settled over me this morning, that we had indeed found our new rhythm - all is falling into place, our days are steady and have found a new schedule. It feels as if Jamesy has always been here - like the gaping hole that was in our family is healed. And with all this, my desire to write is bubbling up and needing an escape.

I gave up being a contributing writer for Raising Homemakers (which I still love and am passionate about homemaking!) several months ago, as I needed to slow and prepare my heart for my son to come home. I also stopped writing regulary - scheduling posts and planning ahead what I would write - and that was perfect for that time.

I have waivered back and forth about whether this season of blogging (I have blogged now for almost 6 years) was coming to an end. I have played with things here, wrestling with whether my blog should remain without comments, but knowing that I cannot keep up with the emails without the comments open. I feel so blessed to have my life intersect with hundreds of sisters in Christ across the globe, because of a little blog. I always feel guilty when I do not have the time to sit and answer someone and give them the time they have given to me. So for now comments are open, and I am trying a new comment system (which is being kind of wonky). I am hoping this allows me to interact quickly with my readers and alleviates my guilt of not responding to emails. If yours was one of the emails that did not receive a response please forgive me. I beg grace from you. I read each and every one of them, and I was so blessed. Thank you for taking this journey with me - it has been a year, sweet friends, since I announced our intent to adopt on my blog. I was covered in prayer, love, and support from many of you, and I am truly indebted.

This morning over our Ethiopian coffee Jim and I got to talking about my blog. He encouraged me to invest more time into my writing here again. I love that I married a man so in-tune with what I am passionate about. Some have told me that I hide behind my written words, but Jim is forever telling me that it is my gift and I need to steward it. He knows that I have to write - I was created to write, and his encouragement has renewed my passion for this little space. I am still not sure how it will all look, but I am eager to move ahead. I write for my audience of One. I write to glorify my God, and to use the talents He has given me. But the fellowship from my faithful readers is the sweet cherry on top. I am thankful for each one of you that has stuck with me during my lag in writing. Although, my ultimate goal here is to always write for God, to write what the Spirit lays on my heart, I do know that God is bringing women here to read. I pray that something I write blesses someone, and always points back to God - not to me.

Please come out of the woodwork and share with me today. Why is it that you read here? What draws you in? What makes you stay or what makes you turn away and leave? Months ago I deleted the stat counter and I no longer keep track of how much traffic comes to my blog or who comes from where. I have no idea, and that has freed me. So I am not asking this with traffic in mind. I am asking this wanting to connect with the hearts of other women. So help me to connect - what can I do/write to encourage you? There is a reason you are here, and I am grateful that God has collided our lives.

I have been thinking and praying over bringing back Momentous Monday. Would anyone still join me? I am excited to be more fully engaged in my writing. It's amazing to see how God can use even a shy, stay-at-home mom and her little keyboard.

My coffee pot is on, and I have a cup waiting. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Sit and stay awhile.

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.This is How I do It.

Recently I have been asked by a few different people about blogging.

More specifically how do I balance having a blog and having my family?

I thought it was a good question, and one that I have even wrestled with on and off, so I decided to address it right here on my blog. This is how I do it. I just have a tiny blog, and I write to remember, so I don't feel pressure like maybe some "bigger" bloggers might. So if you are wondering how they do it - ask them! {grin}

I blog. A lot.

I just have an insatiable desire and even an intrinsic need to write, to get my thoughts out in some way. I am an avid fan of journaling, and I have loved that since my childhood. It started with a beautiful scented diary, complete with a lock and little key when I was eleven years old. My love of recording my thoughts, feelings, and the moments of right now took off like a forest fire. I could fill boxes with old diaries and journals. I still love journaling, but it has taken a different form in this stage of my life - in my homemaking journal and here on my blog.

For me blogging can consume my entire day, if I were to let it. I don't. Here is how I try to make sure of that:

I write my posts quickly. That is because before I ever sit down at my computer to type them out, I have already written and rewritten them in my head. This post, for example, was written the other night as I was trying to fall asleep in bed. Sometimes my posts are written while I am taking a shower, or doing mundane housework, or running on my treadmill. I have done this for as long as I can remember - write in my head and then on paper.

I stockpile photos. I have numerous photos that could go along with various posts. I edit them at different times (usually) then I type a post. Now sometimes a photo just begs me to write a certain post, and I do that, too. I usually only get little chunks here and there to sit at the computer, so that is what works for me.

I draft posts and schedule them to publish (this post for example is drafted. I am not sure when I will choose to publish it.), so if I ever do have a good chunk of time I can write a whole week's worth of posts in one sitting. This has become huge for me, especially with taking on my new role as a Raising Homemakers writer. Early on in my blogging I learned that one should always publish posts at different times of the day, rather than always publishing at say 2:00 in the afternoon. I practice this, but don't know if it really matters!

My family and living life always comes before blogging. I would rather live it then blog it! And if ever blogging starts to take precedence, or I just need a break - I take it, and have done that even recently.

I have just started viewing my blog as a ministry, and I pray about it. I also pray that God would help me to maintain balance and not let blogging consume me, because at this point in my life blogging is not my main ministry - being a wife, mommy, and homemaker is.

I love reading blogs, and I love the godly women I have met via blogging. However, I do have to limit my time reading blogs everyday. I used to read a book every afternoon. Now I read blogs, and I save my books for before bed. I have to set a timer for myself, though. I really do. There are just so many fantastic blogs out there, but I only have so much time.

When I am with my family - I try to be intentional and in the moment.

These are just a few of the ways that I can think of right now that I balance blogging with family.

I certainly do not want to miss precious and cherished moments with these three while I sit in front of a computer.



Now I am curious. How do you balance blogging and family?

.Let's Be Honest.

Okay I must be honest for a moment.

I {really} have been enjoying getting acclimated to Jim's new position as a Pastor. And I am learning it is so much more than a new position, or a new ministry.

It is a way of life.

And I am loving it.

I am learning so very much. I am learning to open my home on a moment's notice. Something that I have never ever been good at. (Have I mentioned before how much I love order and routine and knowing what will happen ahead of time?! ha!) But truly God is chiseling away at me. He is working on my hospitality, my priorities, my pride, oh how He is working!

Our Pastor's wife (We have two pastors at our church - Jim is one. He is the Associate Pastor.) gave me such wise counsel shortly before Jim was hired. She told me to be ready to just let Jim go and minister. I didn't really "get it" when she told me that, but after three short weeks in this ministry I am getting it. I also realize what wisdom was in her words. She has taken me under her wings and has helped me immensely as I feel out this new path before us.

That is {part of} why I have not written any posts in a long time.

The other reason is more foolish.

Awhile back I wrote a post that I was and am very passionate about. I do not regret anything that I wrote, as I have read it and reread it. But I learned that the particular post was misunderstood and misinterpreted to mean something that I was not intending. And it kind of knocked the wind out of my sails. My husband read the post in question and supported my position 100% and did not see a problem with it. But I have just been hesitant to write anything. My skin is not thick. I do not like stirring up controversy. {bleck}

Even now I hesitate to push publish. I have stated and restated that this blog is for me, for me to cherish the moments and preserve the memories of my young family. Along the way I have gathered a handful of dear, sweet readers who amazingly God has allowed my words to encourage their hearts. It is humbling and exciting, because for as long as I could write my letters I have wanted to write and impact people. I always thought I would publish a book, and I even tried a few times. However, God has shown me the past few months that my platform with writing for now is my blog, and I love that. It just hurt to be misunderstood, but I need to get a backbone because that is part of this bit. Is it not?

Mondays are our family day now. I love that. Yesterday we drove to see Jim's parents and stopped at a few thrift stores along the way. Jim and I had a nice chance to talk during our travels. He encouraged me to keep blogging. He feels that it is an important ministry that I have. Maybe he is right. I pray God can use me despite me.

So in being honest, I had my feelings hurt. I sulked for a bit, but I am back. I'm not giving up.

Galatians 6:9
And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.