My passion for hope, for grace & being the best version of ourselves.

Today a friend recommended I buy a few books on marketing and P.R. for the sake of growing my blog.  A few weeks ago, a friend recommended I attend the Blogher Network’s 2010 Conference going on this weekend.  The collision of those conversations with the conference I am actually attending this weekend –The Willowcreek Global Leadership Summit– got me thinking about what I’m doing with this blog.  Am I trying to grow it?  Should I?  Try for income or go ad-free?  Writing outlet or writing practice?

Without making a bunch of decisions about those questions there is one thing I know for sure: I want to spread hope.  I want all of you ladies to join me in trying to become the absolute best versions of ourselves.

Though I am a trained speaker, teacher and preacher this blog is not my place to preach.  Though I am an InterVarsity Staff worker, this blog is not my place to train about strategy for campus ministry.  Though I am a Masters of Divinity student this blog is not the place where I’ll wax eloquent about deep theological issues & agenda’s of the Reformed Church of America denomination of which I am seeking ordination.

My blog is about my tag line: “Life.  Faith.  Culture.  Relationships.”

My blog is about having hope in life.  It’s about having hope in faith.  It’s about having hope in culture & having hope in relationships.  It’s about gabbing gracefully about life, faith, culture & relationships.  It’s about learning to be a writer who lives with hope and grace and somehow through my words inspires you to live a healthier more hope-filled, grace-filled life.

I want my blog to communicate authentic, vulnerable, genuine, enjoyable, useful fodder that will lead all of us to be better, more loving people.

I don’t want to be preachy y’all.  I’m just not in the mood.  If your looking for a Christian woman’s blog that is devotional based, with multiple use of Scripture etc. there are lots of other blogs to fill that need for you.

I also know that my blog is never going to be able to offer posts like my fave blog Simple Mom on how to do this or how to do that. (Seriously, Tsh is the best Christian-Mommy-Frugal-Simple-Living-well-rounded blogger ever)!

I know that my blog is never going to be able to show you how to make carebears out of cheese like my new blogging friend, Shannon.  (A blog about how to make healthy, cute, enjoyable presentation worthy lunches for your kids —it’s wonderful).

I know that my blog is never going to be about to tell you how to do much of anything useful like keeping a house clean, or eating healthy or getting life in order like the Zen Habits blog does.

Y’all know I’m much too frazzled and crazy to tell anyone else how to organize their life.  I’m still trying to figure out how to organize my own for crying out loud.

My thoughts about this was inspired by Christine Cain.  A speaker here at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit who can preach her butt off.  She started The A 21 Campaign with the goal of abolishing slavery in the 21st century.  She gave a riveting talk about how to lead with hope.  Working with sex slaves she must lead them with authentic hope.  She was passionate about how her hope is rooted in Jesus.  Passionate.  It was a wonderful reminder for me how much hope my relationship with God has given me.  Though, stupidly, I forget to blog about it.  Duh?!?!

My hope in Jesus is the number one reason I believe that I’m a passionate person.

I’m passionate about my relationship with God, about offering hope and truth to people through Jesus.  I’m passionate about building God’s Kingdom, about being the best communicator I can be, about creating healthy family & friend relationships.

But I’m also passionate about black people and racial issues.  I’m passionate about helping people who are suffering and I’m passionate about being an advocate in any way I can.  To date, that has manifested by working with college students, but I hope from here on out that I can use writing as a tool in my advocacy tool belt.

I’m also passionate about fashion, and television, and movies and books and gen-x culture.  Also, the color red.

And that’s what I write about.  I write out of my passions.  I write out of my love to communicate and if that doesn’t somehow change the world around me I need to find additional ways to spread hope.

I’ll be honest & communicate as best I can, and if you’d like to join me -because I’m assuming I’ll keep blogging for the rest of my life- please do.  Keep coming back.  Comment.  Commit to taking my challenges –coming soon– and to being the best version of yourself.

I think I may have something to say that could be useful to someone out there at some point in human history.  Hopefully.

Anything in particular you want me to write about?