This morning the tiny icon shaped like a bell said, “Congratulations, it’s your anniversary. You’ve been blogging four years!”

Oh my! I don’t dare read the first year or so, convinced I’ve made no progress or worse yet, I’m in the same old place.

The timing of the announcement collided head on with seven or so paragraphs in draft where I’d once again belabor the significant or insignificant challenge that battled back and to.

Got a little taste of accolade occasionally and I found myself hungry, starving for me, miserably full, filled.

Full of myself.

So, that piece, it’s staying in the draft for now, hopefully forever, while I come to terms with the reality of this space I write, what it’s been, what it should be becoming.

I came home tonight on wet roads and under little pockets of orange behind thickness of dark clouds.

This morning the Rose of Sharon plant towering late summer, brought me back to a place I’d been missing, the pause.

I was intentional, opening myself to the beauty that should fill me again, not striving to see; instead, finding what might come in the pause.

The place where I remembered not to seek, instead waiting to have little thoughts come to mind with no expectation, only patience.

Like falling from above, landing ’round my feet, scooped up and brought to my chest, allowed to rest near my heart.

I’d gotten away from simplicity, I’d been sipping the juice of significance and I was thirsty, so desperately thirsty for more.

My longing for notice becoming impossible to quench.

I wondered what is this blogging I do if nothing more than a pink diary and your sister found the key?

I considered the way I’ve reacted to a tiny bit of glory.

Paintings selling, guest posts and strangers saying they hope I never quit writing.

Too much, Lisa.

Having a taste of it made me strive to be filled and in that scrounging for another little morsel of praise, I lost my voice, the thing I call treasure. I’d made joy ugly effort; I’d pressured myself to be measured by most everything other than my worth decided already by my Heavenly Father.

Too much Lisa

So, I sat.

I thought, I slept and prayed. I stumbled upon truths and began to believe in what I’d decided a “treasure” again.

Stepped back and away to come back not better, not broken, or made hard from shame.

Instead, softer like glow, welcome home.

I pray I learn to write this way, a soft but, still brave way…that I not spill my angst all over the page, contradictory to my declared quiet confidence.

I pray I wait.

Wait to be filled, my heart bursting with longing to tell, so that my writing be so graceful and grace-filled it will be quite clear it’s only grace

Grace that’s brought me thus far.

And there will be a reader or two or three who might have heard of grace ad nauseam; but, maybe might all of sudden wonder…

Could grace be for me? Could the grace that found Lisa Anne find me too?

That will be glory, that will be glory to God.

To know my words cause wonder, cause another to wonder…What is this mercy? Who is this Jesus?

Perhaps, I should know.

This is how I shall write I pray, not tripping over self into the abyss of bottomless searching for significance, for notice.

Satisfied in the place of pause, abandoned and found again in the place I remember to whom goes the glory.

From whom I’ve become acquainted with the knowledge of grace.

“May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.”

‭‭2 Peter‬ ‭1:2‬ ‭ESV‬‬