God, the Grandmas, and the Girls

One of my most faithful blog readers doesn’t even have a computer. My maternal grandmother has a printed copy of every blog post I’ve written stored in a three-ring binder on the shelf in her living room. Each Friday, my sister faithfully prints out posts by she, me, and Grandma’s other grandchildren and sticks them in an envelope, affixes a stamp, and sends them on their way to Papa and Grandma. (I don’t have a printer, which is a good excuse for asking my little sister to do it!) On Monday or Tuesday, Grandma walks to the mailbox, and forsakes everything she was or should be doing, to read through the stack of blog posts from the previous week. Rather “old news” in the blogosphere by then, but fresh and new and much enjoyed by her.

The first dark blue notebook is another cousin’s updates about life now lived far away from the grandparents. The brown one (“nearly full” notes the photographer, my sister) has the blog posts from yours truly. The yellow notebook has e-mails from my cousin Abbie when she was traveling in Alaska and Africa. The green binder contains the details upon which my sister is “Harping Upon.” The pink one holds blogged letters to the baby girls of this Pink House. The maroon notebook contains more updates from Africa, via my cousin Jennifer (not Grandma’s own granddaughter, but one she prays for nonetheless!).

And the last on the shelf? The red binder holds Papa and Grandma’s Christmas Letters, written throughout their 56 years (and counting!) of marriage. (Not that we grandchildren come by our love for writing naturally or anything.)

Whenever I get confused regarding what I should be blogging about, I just remember that row of notebooks.

My paternal grandparents have a computer—and the internet! They might get the news a bit more quickly. But I don’t think it could be measured who enjoys the stories of their great-grandchildren more.

Whenever I get flustered over my audience, I think of my grandmas—one sitting in front of the computer in an office decorated with antique children’s toys that my daddy and I both played with, the other walking down the oak-bordered driveway to the mailbox beside the corral and barn on the ranch where my mom was raised.

Dear Self,

I’m writing this to you—me, myself, and I—so no one will be confused about the direction of my thoughts. You need the reminder, Gretchen. This is one of your many “notes to self” to keep in mind as you go through life. Take heed.

You’ve been reading through my old blog entries. Honest, real, authentic blogging? That was it. You were practically live-blogging your days as a farmer’s wife and new mom. Your blog was more of a group letter to your mom, sister, and grandmas than anything else.

You even aired your dirty laundry at times. But only the photos of that which had been carefully sorted into piles and laundry baskets!

A friend messaged you on FaceBook:

Thank you for being so honest on your blog. I have to say that I’ve always looked to you as one who “has it all together”. It’s so encouraging to hear I’m not the only one who never can seem to get all the laundry done or keep up on the dishes! Whew!

You were glad you’d humbled yourself enough to admit you didn’t have it all together.

But you came to believe that honesty does not always mean telling all of the truth.

Your cousin Jennifer wrote from Africa:

I love your blog! I love the fact that I feel like I’m watching through the window of your cute little house, getting in on all the fun things that you are doing. Thank you for keeping it updated!

And you were thankful that whether in Africa or just a state away, your relatives could keep up with you and your little girls.

But like Jennifer said, they are just watching through the window. No one will ever know authentic life in the Little Pink House unless they really live there.

Even then, they would not know the thoughts of your heart. And well you know that it would be neither edifying nor encouraging for you to post every thought that passes through your mind.

It might be an encouragement to some to know that you honestly don’t always get the laundry folded right away and that you truthfully don’t have perfectly trained children. But it would be in no way edifying to anyone to air the dirty laundry of your marriage, family, or your church.

You’ve always worn your heart on your sleeve. But you don’t want to be the blogger with a chip on your shoulder.

Iron that sharpens iron does not tear down—it builds up, it points up: to the Savior!

You’ve read blog posts written in the valley that turned hearts to the Comfort that carried them through.

You’ve read blog posts that talked about anything but the elephant in the room of their life, in order to refrain from any hint of gossip or malice.

You’ve read blog posts that humbly admitted wrong while thanking God for His grace.

You’ve read blog posts written in the midst of relational ugliness and unthinkable situations that showed Jesus to be the only Hope and Answer.

You’ve read blog posts that exposed error by pointing to the Truth.

It all started when Ashleigh told me I should go to the Relevant conference.

I went to the website. I looked a the list of speakers. And I wanted to be there.

Of course, there was no way it was feasible, with our family business and my babies–not to mention the fact that I don’t like going anywhere without my hubby.

But I kept drooling over the speaker list. Thinking perhaps they would podcast it or let us buy session CD’s.

Then I started laughing at myself. You don’t even read these ladies’ blogs, Gretchen. Why should you go hear them in person when you haven’t even taken the time to read what they write? How can you need so badly to learn from them when you don’t even know what they’re blogging?

So I started clicking their links. I got to know more than just their bios. I read their words, saw their smiles, heard their hearts.

I found a couple that I wanted to get to know better. I saw a few that I wanted to keep reading. I put a few in my Favorites. I even added a few to my Google Reader list.

In the process, my Google Reader list began to overflow. I did not always get it all read. I had to skim. I had to read the first sentence and then decide I didn’t need to take the time to read the whole thing.

I trimmed a few. The ones I always skimmed. The ones that did not uplift or encourage. The ones that did not point me onward and upward, “further up and further in.”

I also gave myself permission to skim the ones that were left. Because I did want to see what they were writing. (And the way my internet “connection” is, the only feasible way is to have them in my Google Reader. If they aren’t there, I guarantee you, they won’t get seen.) But now I make the choice to read the entry or skip to the one below it.

And still, it’s the people I know, the people I have a closer connection with, that I read more carefully. It’s people like my cousin Jennifer and my little sister whose every word I want to read.

Because honestly, when I start clicking around in the bloggy world, I quite quickly begin to feel incredibly overwhelmed. And very, very small. (And yes, all those extraneous adjectives and adverbs were necessarily appropriate.)

Thinking Out Loud

Mar 162010

I’ve often wondered what my writing professor would say if he ever condescended to visit FaceBook or Twitter. Would he rejoice that his too-verbose students had finally learned to condense their thoughts into a few to-the-point sentences? Or would he see those short messages as only an introductory paragraph to an essay? Maybe he would even think, upon reading a “Tweet” or two, that we’d finally learned to deliver the closing punch, just the way he tried to teach us in all those articles he made us write?

To me, FaceBook statuses and Twitter Tweets are only the opening—a few short lines waiting to be expanded on. Only the hint of a story hiding behind the screen. Teasing me to ask for more. Evidence of “the rest of the story” waiting to be told.

But maybe the reason we only write status messages these days is that we don’t take time for more. Or maybe, we really have no more to say.

Perhaps, even, the less said the better. It might be that we Tweet too much. It could be that we’re obsessed with updating our statuses.

Or possibly, very possibly, we are all much too busy, since we have no more time to keep up with our friends than to read their one-liner status updates.

It could be that we have lost the art of long letters and meaningful conversation. Perhaps those 140 character Tweets are all we care to invest in our relationships. And even more sadly still, maybe no one cares enough to read more of our status than 420 characters. Maybe no one wants to read “the rest of the story.”

I have both FaceBook and Twitter accounts, and have even been known to post a collection of status updates on this very blog. Do I always gravitate back to blogging because it is more like a good old-fashioned letter? Or is it simply because blog posts accommodate my verbose tendencies?

Thankfully, there are exceptions to every rule. Nothing I’ve said here is true of everyone all the time. I am just thinking out loud. But isn’t that what most online forms of communication are—thinking aloud?

The question that begs asking then is this: is anyone listening to what we have to say? Or perhaps more importantly, are we saying anything worth listening to?

Either Blog or Cry

Nov 132009

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I blog. It has prompted a lot of revelations, which will spill out into more blog posts! But the other day, as I was picking up the growing collection of Good Dog, Carl and other board books from the bathroom—stacked on the floor, around the potty chair, beside the washing machine, and atop the clothespin basket—I laughed, thinking about how this was a mommy moment that other moms would probably enjoy hearing about. And I realized that sometimes, thinking about how one is going to blog about it, keeps one from crying about it:

When you are kneading bread to the tune of two crying little people and thinking that the bread won’t possibly rise properly with all that noise.
When the loaves of cinnamon apple swirl bread rise over and above the pans and have to be lowered to the very bottom rack of the oven lest they come out through the burners on top.
When your daughter has thirteen books collected on the bathroom floor for her potty time reading.
When you finally get time—and two hands—at breakfast to eat the second half of the grapefruit that’s been waiting in the fridge for days on end for just such a two-handed meal.
When you are having a Very Bad Hair Day and wondering why in the world you ever cut your hair—and then halfway through the day you realize you forgot to put any gel in your hair that morning.
When your two-month-old is making every appearance of intending to sleep through the night and your almost two-year-old wakes up crying inconsolably (because she has to go potty but doesn’t want to)—and wakes up your two-month-old.
When you have just finally gotten down to a schedule and routine that works well for everyone—and then the time changes.
When the morning’s task of vacuuming and mopping the floor takes three times as long because first the too-tired toddler needs to pick up her toys, which means one-on-one training time about how to pick up one’s toys obediently, which means the floor does not get mopped before Daddy gets home for lunch!
When the day you decide to can salsa is the day no one wants to take a nap (except for you).
When just 48 hours after you paid to wash the car, there are not only muddy kitty prints all over it, but cat hair stuck in the muddy kitty prints!