Note to Self: You’re failing miserably at…

So I basically suck at blogging.

If you found this blog when I started it last summer, then you may have noticed that I went from posting almost daily to  being almost eerily silent.  You may have also noticed that I’ve occasionally changed a background or something, but haven’t bothered to even post a quick “hey y’all, how’s it goin’?” since November .

Of course, it’s more likely that you barely noticed I’ve been gone at all – much like the tabs on my page that I just discovered disappeared at some point during my tinkering.

Oh, before I forget…

Hey y’all!  How’s it goin’?  

And now back to our regularly scheduled blog post…

No excuses, no reason, I’m just failing at being a blogger.

It’s not for lack of trying, or for lack of something to say.  (I’ve always got something to say!)   It’s just that I can’t stay focused on writing a post.  I start, then stop to browse other themes, then start on a completely different post, then move on to whatever in my real life requires me.

The number of unfinished drafts I have saved on my laptop is actually a little embarrassing.

But it’s not just blogging.  I’m really starting to think I may be failing at life in general.  (Yep, that’s right — you get a grade for this life thing.)

So let’s start with the last thing I posted about…  NaNoWriMo.

I won!  YAY!  I didn’t fail at writing a novel in 30 days!  I’m so amazing…

After finishing the first draft of my novel in November, I tucked it safely away in it’s little Scrivener folder and moved on to my next unfinished project.

Much like this blog, I’ve visited my NaNo novel many times and even done some editing here and there…  but that’s as far as it’s gone.  At this rate, it might be ready for a first reader somewhere around the year 2040.

So “F” number #1 goes to…  failing miserably as a novelist.

Let’s move on to “F” number #2, shall we…

My husband is an underground coal miner.  The mine he works for is shutting down in March.  Understandably, he’s worried about what our future is going to look like, how our bills will get paid, whether he will be able to continue to support our family, etc.

And I can’t seem to get worried.

I try.

And sometimes I even succeed at freaking out for a few minutes.  But then, I think back to every time I’ve ever not had a job or not known how I was going to get the bills paid for the month…  it all worked out in the end.

I’ve stepped out in faith numerous times (including when I quit my job last year) and God has always seen that my needs have been met.  Something else (usually better) has come along at exactly the right moment.   This is apparently some kind of strange phenomenon, in which my stepfather refers to as “being dipped in sh*t.” (Whatever that means.)

My lack of anxiety over our financial future and insistence that we’re going to be okay, has a tendency to come across to my husband as making light of his feelings and concerns.  I point to Matthew and the fact that I can get a better paying job (I’ve been doing transcription work part-time from home) and he points out that he’s “the man” and is therefore supposed to be the provider.

Even though I insist that eye-roll thing is completely involuntary, it still feels like I’m failing at being a supportive wife.  (Okay, maybe it wasn’t completely involuntary… I deserve the F.  Ugh.)

And the next “F” is for…

My faith.

We recently left our old church.  Obviously, this wasn’t a decision that we came to easily.  It was an answer to a prayer that I thought was going to look a lot a different…  so I ignored it.

After a sermon one Sunday, I began praying everyday (sometimes multiple times) a pretty simple, but powerful prayer.  I wanted to be completely at the Lord’s will. I asked Him to take my life over and I would follow where ever that led and however that looked.

And I was faithful to that… until I started feeling the tug to leave our church home.

We were married there and to some extent, my identity as a Christian was there.

Even though I knew in my heart that the Lord was leading me a different way, I ignored it.  I refused to even talk to my husband about it.  I continued to pray the prayer, and the more I prayed the more it became obvious that we were no longer where we were supposed to be.

But I did nothing…even when my husband came home one day after running into someone who had recently switched to another church.  He asked me if I ever thought about switching churches.

I lied.

Instead of being honest with him, I said “of course not.”

About a month later, I finally broke down and told him that I had thought about it.  He said he didn’t really want to, but was also feeling this undeniable pull that he should be somewhere else.

A friend invited us to their church’s anniversary service.  We went, we felt like we were “home” there, surrounded by people we had never met before.  Being an introvert, this is definitely not something that I experience often.  But I still shrugged it off because obviously, “there is absolutely no way that God wants me to leave my church.”

This is one that I guess the man upstairs wasn’t going to let me fail for too much longer though.   After almost a year of ignoring what I knew in my heart we were supposed to be doing, He eventually sent a sign that was so big that even my youngest daughter asked if we could switch churches.  And so (after almost two more months of praying for a different answer), we left our church home.

Hmm….Since I did eventually follow through, I’m thinking I may actually have a D- in faith, which isn’t really much better, but it’s a start, right?

So today is officially my first day on the road to not failing at life.  This post is my commitment to myself to be better…  at blogging, at writing, at supporting my husband, and at following and growing my faith.

Okay, let’s be real…  this post is ACTUALLY a commitment to stop grading myself.