I have a shameful secret. It always is revealed at the worst times.

Here it is: I am a hypocrite. I don’t blog.

Here’s the thing – I own a marketing agency and we very strongly encourage our clients to blog. “It improves your transparency! It will increase your visibility!” I chirp. “You need to do it – it is proven that you’ll engage your customers if you blog!” I encourage.

And all the while, I avoid our own corporate blog. Can’t bring myself to do it. Beat myself up about it. I care about our clients, care deeply about doing a great job for them, but don’t love marketing itself enough to write about it. I know very well that I am not a marketing guru like Seth Godin or Mitch Joel and I never will be.

Last spring, something changed. Over coffee and conversation with Holley Gerth & Ann Voskamp – two bloggers / writers that I appreciate enormously and who I am honoured to call friends, my perspective shifted. Ann talked about her need to blog – not for followers and accolades – but as an act of worship.

And there, in those three words, is the difference. I love to write – have for as long as I can remember – but it needs to be for something greater than myself. Greater than building a business. Greater than attracting readers. It must be from a place within my soul that says

“this is my act of worship – writing in obedience and surrender because I can’t not express these things”

So here I am. Starting to write, with not just a little fear and trepidation. Every since that pivot point over coffee and banana muffins that Saturday morning, I find myself writing in my mind – tumbling words over and over to express what I experience and how I am discovering God in the bits and pieces of my day. I pray that they will find their way from my heart and mind down through my fingers onto the keyboard and when I hit ‘post’, they will be His to use. And should He choose to use these thoughts, these experiences, these not-so-random divine serendipities to encourage someone else He loves – you – then I am grateful.
By the way – I feel better now. Like I can exhale deeply, my blog-quitter shame lifting.

I might just be able to blog after all.

Ellen