When I was about eight years old my mother signed me up for a beauty pageant. There was just one problem: the talent part of the competition. I couldn’t sing or dance or show off any of the more obvious gifts all young girls my age seemed to possess.

 

So I wrote a monologue and acted it out, pretending to have a phone conversation with a friend about a bully situation. It’s okay – you can laugh. But there were all the makings of a good drama: conflict, resolution and props. It was very progressive.

 

I didn’t win that beauty pageant, but I did tap into a love of writing and telling stories.

 

Fast forward to college, and after one summer internship at a local news station, the glamour of broadcast journalism with its low pay and long hours quickly rubbed off. I shifted my focus to a corner office in a sparkly skyscraper (I had seen the hit movie Working Girl, after all). 

 

I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism and public relations and skipped off to corporate America.

 

I spent seven years as a communications professional, strategizing, spinning and PowerPointing, and then decided that seven was God’s perfect number of completion.

 

For more than a decade I’ve worked as “CEO” of the Smith Home. If you’re a mom, you know what that job description entails: in-house nurse, night nanny, teacher, protector, coach, Uber driver, bottom wiper, cook, counselor, cheerleader, life guard, referee, human mule, gross detector, calendar coordinator, social liaison, wardrobe police, and unpaid intern at many a school and church function.

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As a self-professed logophile and serial reader, my favorite book of all time is the book, the Bible. Its pages of promises breathe God life into all my deflated places. I find incomparable peace in knowing that His ways and thoughts are immeasurably higher than mine.

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The desire of my heart that God planted long before a career or husband or children has always been to write. Writing is the sacred place where I enter into communion with Jesus and feel most alive in Him.

 

I believe this journal is one of the good works God prepared in advance for me to do for His glory. I hope it blesses you. 

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I believe God has a plan for you too, for specific works that fit with the unique personality and gifts He’s given you. I am in awe of the way He entrusts us to do His kingdom work.

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Abide in Jesus is as an offering of worship to the greatest Lover of my soul.

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My prayer is that this space would be a place of refuge, relief and reflection where you can curl up in your nook of the world, connect with God and soak up His plans and purpose for you.

 

I hope these writings will resonate with your heart and compel you to lean in, listen and abide in the only One who is worthy.