Around the corner

This blog has begun to feel like a burden. I know that my mother and mother-in-law and brother’s family in the US read it and keep up to date with my family. I use it as a memory-jogger when I write the children’s birthday cards or review the year. But it has begun to feel like a chore. I feel a heavy presence of an invisible readership expecting things of me, things I don’t feel like delivering right now. I crank up the pressure on myself and live in a fantasy world in which people criticize me for not doing what they want, for failing in some way, for not being as good as they expected. Perhaps I am just not as good as I expect. I would love to be a writer. Do I have the skill? I’m not sure. Right now, though, I know that I don’t have the time. My focus is called to be elsewhere. I believe that I am called, to invest all that I have and all that I am in raising my three children. Immediately, I can hear the criticism, am I a ‘helicopter parent’, hovering over my children, micro-managing every part of their lives? Am I living my life vicariously through them? Would I just not cut it in the world of employment?
A while ago, someone I trust very much told me that I needed to be a place where I was content to be forgotten, to be insignificant. Well, I don’t know about content, but I guess I’m curious to see what God might have in store for me in the secret places of obscurity. Not a position of leadership in the church, not a speaker or a writer, not most the popular or most contributing volunteer at the local community run. Doing nothing for my reputation or to influence how others will feel about me. And letting go of the blog for a while seems a part of that. I might drop in from time to time, if the mood takes me, but for now, I’m letting go of the expectations I place on myself to post regularly and I will wait to see what is around the corner.