Monday, January 3, 2011

It's story time...My Story Monday

I love to hear stories. True stories. I like to know how couples met each other. I love stories of salvation. I loved it when my church used to have testimonies before the services. I like to know how a family became a homeschooling family. I want to know what led people to a geographical area. I enjoy testimonies of God's faithfulness in the lives of believers. I am not really nosey, I just love to hear what God has orchestrated in lives. It always encourages me.


I just stumbled across a new blog with some great stories. The name of the blog is Imperfect People, in love with a perfect God. Oh yeah, I can relate. It reminded me that stories are meant to be shared. 


I have so many stories. In fact, I'm a repressed blogger, I could have taken up blogging about 10 years ago. Some of my stories are victories, I know they could encourage people. Some would leave you scratching your head and asking, is she for real? Some stories are painful, but true. These can be very uncomfortable. Sometimes, I want to write more, but I don't want to offend a person. What if they stumbled upon my blog, realized it was they who I was talking about? What if my kids grow up, read my blog and hate me? What if the Gman reads something he didn't want published? What if I disqualify myself for a future job because of my writings? What if I alienate my friends? What if my friends start avoiding me because of my blog? I am actually wondering if they are.


If I think about it too much, my blog will be blank.


Boring.


I have really been thinking and praying about my blog lately. After a friend nominated my blog for the homeschool blogger award in the Thrifty category, I thought of the direction my blog has taken. I am thrifty, I love to save a buck, I love to encourage others to do so, but it's not everything about me. How can I blog about Thrift when I can't even find my coupon box? 


I can blog about what I have seen. I have seen God do incredible things since I gave my entire life to Christ in 1986. I know that I have things to blog about that can encourage whoever is reading my blog. I aim to lift up. I think about my struggles and the victories, they need to be shared. Perhaps this one below will encourage someone to finally start a blog, you know who you are.


books by sisterlisa, on Pix-O-Sphere


The short story of my blog.


I began blogging in February of 2010. My original intention was to be accepted as a curriculum reviewer for the Old Schoolhouse review crew. I was hoping that they would choose me. The opportunity to try new curriculum, stick with it and write about it appealed to me. I wasn't really sure what it was going to be like, but I knew I envied my friends who had blogs and I loved reading blogs. 


My first trial posts were reviews on products published by the Old Schoolhouse. They were nice eBooks, I worked for a while tweaking those trial posts, I anxiously wanted to be picked. I enjoyed the books, and wrote the posts. This was much more work than I expected. Grammar and spelling are not my strong points. 


After about 4 or 5 posts, I realized that blogging is incredibly satisfying. Writing things down, getting them off my mind, is really therapeutic. Blogging also fills my ever present need to scrapbook. Something I never set up time to do. I also learned that the non-review posts were fun. I enjoy memes like Five Question Friday and Wordless Wednesday and still love the "fun" posts. I began to see how bloggers could want or need to have more than one blog.


Two or three months passed and I was finally chosen. I had already learned blogging for fun is well...fun. Reviews are like reviews. Receiving the packages in the mail is so easy. The nitty gritty of sharing my opinions is like work. Merging reviews and my random thoughts can be choppy. You see my family, my friends and my homeschool buddies are a very diverse group. I kept hearing that blogs should have target audiences. Here's my target audience: Friends of Terri G. I just can't go in one direction, it is so not like me. So here I am, this is my blog and this is me. Here is where I am going in the new year...


People like to read stories. I plan on telling a few. These are true but names may be changed. You understand, the innocent must be protected. But you can be sure that they are my stories. I hope you will come back next Monday for another one.




I welcome reader comments with open arms. I also understand if you aren't the commenting or hugging type of person, you can drop me an email at accidentallyhomeschooling@gmail.com.

2 comments:

Katie Bulmer said...

You are awesome! Thanks for the link! Your blog is pretty cool too! Our oldest is 3 but I am tossing the idea around of "accidently homeschooling" :)

Unknown said...

Love it! Your writing is great.

I too, love a good story! Hence my blog title "Stories form the Shoebox". Isn't it interesting how bloggin becomes something diferent than we thougth it was going to be?

We all have stories up our sleeves of past, present, and future. I will definitley be coming back around to see what stories you are sharing. :)