It is hard for me to believe that it has been almost a year since I embarked upon this blogging adventure. I wasn’t sure just how easy or difficult this activity would be and there has been some surprises over these past 52 weeks.

My stats indicate that I have actually posted 60 times this year, and my writing has been viewed 2273 times by 1673 different people. I have written over 30,000 words, averaging 500 words per post and I now have 40 ‘followers’ (people who receive notifications when I post something new).

Selected articles have been republished, with my permission, in The Salvation Army’s national weekly magazine – 13 in total. This dramatically increases the amount of people who have the opportunity to engage with the thoughts I have wrestled onto the page.

I find this information quite intriguing as I didn’t set out to write for anyone in particular. I was actually pretty mystified why I would feel so compelled to commit to a weekly-ish reflection of God at work in my everyday life. This wasn’t an activity I was keen to take up, and there have been a number of times when I haven’t been able to write, where there were other times when the words came tumbling out so quickly I barely had time to capture them!

I’m not always aware of how well readers have connected with what I’ve written, but I keep putting it out there. Why? Because I believe this is what God has asked me to do. And not really for anyone else’s benefit, but my own.

Writing so deliberately is a discipline for me, and I’m not good at discipline. I am a procrastinator at heart and full of self doubt so I always find it surprising when I hear from people about the ways my writing has blessed them. I have spent some time today re-reading some of my posts and have discovered that there are times when my creativity in story telling is really very good and something to be proud of.

I stand at a cross roads today. I committed to this experiment for 12 months, so now what do I do? I haven’t heard God ask me to stop. This has been tough, but not impossible. It has been a nuisance at times, but also a real sense of accomplishment. And if nothing else, it has forced me to live an examined life, forever on the lookout for insights to God’s lessons for me to share.

I will continue to ask Him for some clarity about ‘what next’, and until then I guess I will persevere. Romans chapter 5 verse 3 & 4 tells me that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance will produce character, and character produces hope, and we all need a little more hope in our lives.

Thanks for joining me in this journey so far.

Be blessed.