If there’s one question that I get asked a lot it’s this: how do you find the time to blog?
Yes, I daresay that I seem fairly prolific, and so I could answer that I’m just good at time management.
But that would not be true.
I’m a busy mum of five and blogging for Young Catholic Mums is actually my equivalent of spiritual journaling. You can read Sarah’s post about spiritual journaling here if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
I’ve always been a linguist – I like words. Reading, speaking, writing, that is the way in which I remember things. The way I communicate, it’s almost the way I breathe.
Reading a post or a book that resonates leaves me with reflections, ideas and questions that I need to work through in order to clear my mind and get on with the vocation in which I struggle along in.
My blog posts often begin from conversations or books that I’ve read, or something that I’m struggling with at home. They’re the ideas I’m reflecting on in prayer, offering again in Confessions as the struggles I can’t shake, or the vision I have for the revitalisation of the Church.
They are the digital record of the complicated way in which my brain works.
They are the typed up version of the handwritten notes jotted in journals and scraps of paper around my house as I mull over the Benedict Option while I’m mopping the floor, or the idea for a craft project I had while wood carting with the kids and talking about Fatima.
They are the published spiritual wanderings of a mum little different to you who are reading this now.
I am no wonder mum who is able to find oodles of time to write and meditate while keeping the house perfectly tidy and the children all the epitome of perfect behaviour.
I’m the mum who constantly worries over the way in which I parent my children, and how I can better raise them as Godly people.
The mum who is often humbled in public byher children’s errant behaviour.
I am the wife who often feels like she’s not quite the spouse she should be.
I am the introverted woman who is self-conscious in public and has to drag herself out of the house to attend the activities that she organises.
I am the woman whose prayer life could always be better.
I am the sinner in need of a Saviour.
I am just like you. But my way of processing it all is to write. And if you can find some consolation or resonance in my words then perhaps my writing will be helpful to you too.
So how do I find time to blog?
Well, how do you find time to pray? To meditate?
For me it’s much the same thing.
I find time to blog because I need to spend that time with God or the wheels fall off and we careen dangerously off course.
I find time to blog because it reminds me of how insignificant I am and how much I am in need of God.
And yes, when I’m blogging the breakfast crumbs wait, the wood pile grows ominously lower and wet washing idles in the washing machine. The kids play around me, or near me, or nap.
But that’s my time with God, my digital spiritual journaling, and it’s more important than the washing which can always be re-spun, and I can always race out for more wood before the fire dies out altogether.
I find time to blog because it’s a priority.
Whatever your equivalent of my blogging is, you need to embrace it and nurture it. We all need to make progress in the spiritual life, because often it feels like we’re taking one step forward and two steps back.
You need to find time for God.
Amongst the mess, the chaos, the challenges of your vocation.
Without God, it’s impossible.
But with God?
Well, I think we all know the answer that one.
Originally posted 2017-07-18 15:00:01.