Blogging about the Blog

You know you have become a little obsessed with writing reflection time when perfecting the layout of your blog becomes a nightly activity. I get on the blog, I intend to write, and then suddenly I am lost in inside-blog world trying to figure out how to get my "gadgets" on the right hand side of the page (still can't get them there--any suggestions? They used to be there and then suddenly decided to attach themselves at the end instead. Hmm.) Before I know it, I have spent an hour playing around with the options instead of actually writing...and usually, I still haven't "perfected" or even fixed what I intended to revise in the first place. Ah, good intentions :-).

That said, I do have hopes for this blog. I have to confess it is a little scary to publish my reflections in cyberspace where potentially anyone could read them, but I have been encouraged by the many blogs I read on a weekly basis that lead me to think about dear friends and important issues in the world today. Now if only I could get that darn "favorite blogs" gadget on the right hand side of the page :-).

Here are my hopes for this blog:
1.) That will help connect Clay and me with our family and friends around the country whom we love and want to stay connected with always...
2.) That it will serve as a scrapbook of sorts of our life together, full of pictures and memories and our own voices.
3.) That it will enable me to slow down and express in words what I am learning every day. I am tired of letting inspirations, helpful insights, and special stories escape me before I can even register and appreciate them.

Speaking of our own stories, Clay and I read "Dwarves in the Stable" by Frederick Buechner for our Sunday School class this past weekend, and I couldn't help but connect with something Buechner states in his memoir:

"Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also spiritually."

I'll be sure to keep this in mind as I continue to explore the endless possibilities that blogger.com offers its bloggers in terms of layout and design. Often it's not how something looks but what it means that is fundamentally important.