The Hypocrisy of Giving Advice – Why Blogging Scares Me

I have a confession to make.

There’s a reason why my blog has been so quiet lately.

It’s not for a lack of content.  You guys should see the smattering of google docs that I have, each packed with post topics and ideas.  And yet, somehow, very few blog posts actually come into existence.

Here’s the thing.  Every time I start to write about something, something that I feel like I have learned or that I can help someone else with, I realize that I constantly fall short of even the lessons that I have learned, that I fail every single stinking day at the very things I thought I grasped. And I feel hypocritical, fake, and self-centered if I write about those things.  How dare I give you, my reader, advice that I so often fail to follow?  Or maybe it’s incomplete, maybe it really does help, but I still can’t seem to handle things the way I should?

Life is rough right now.  My family is going through a very difficult trial, as are some close friends.  I am the first to admit that I have not handled it all as gracefully or faithfully as I should.  So how can I write about trusting in God, about keeping a smile on your face, about tuning your heart to His never-ending grace, when I fail at every single one of those things every day?

I hate fake people.  And I sure don’t want to be one of those.

So, I never write a blog post.  Because blog posts are about life.  And guys, I fail at life.

As I thought about this, trying to work it out, something that my dear mother used to say popped into my head.  Whenever we couldn’t figure out an answer to, say, a math problem, Mom always said, “Use what you know to figure out what you don’t know”.  We were always embarrassed to admit how many times her words proved useful. 😉

Well, Mom, your wisdom never grows stale.

God reminds us constantly throughout His Word to REMEMBER.  Remember who you are, remember the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, remember the great things God has done.

I need to remember the lessons I have learned in the past.  Especially when I fall short.  There is something about writing things down that help you really ingrain a lesson into your memory.  I have already referred back to several of my old blog posts, reading through them and letting them re-teach me.

We are forgetful creatures.  We constantly need to be reminded of the truth, of the things we have learned in the past.  We need to repeat them to ourselves over and over again, drilling them further and further into our brains until they lodge themselves in our hearts.  And then we can build upon those lessons, growing even further, applying them to new situations.  We can use what we know to figure out what we don’t know.

So, I suppose this post is a myriad of things.  Perhaps it is a disclaimer or a manifesto of sorts.  There’s a saying that goes, “We read to know that we are not alone”.  I think that is why we write, too.  There is something magical that happens when your thoughts that you spilled upon a page (virtual or otherwise) resonate with someone else.  The greatest feeling in the world for a writer is when someone else reads your work and says, “YES!”.

This is the journey of a writer, of a blogger, or anyone who shares their thoughts with the world.  We write and read to know that we are not alone.  We write and read to encourage one another, to learn from each other.  I write so that I can remind myself of what I have learned.  And maybe, just maybe, along the way, you will learn something too.

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash