My Conversion Narrative (not the important one)

I never used to like personal blogs much. When I first heard about them, I was astonished that people thought others would want to read daily updates about themselves. And their dogs, as it turned out. They seemed mostly either boring or bitter. (The blogs, not the people. And no offense, by the way, to those with blogs, dogs, or both--these were my feelings in my unregenerate state.)

But when Julie started her blog not too long ago, I happened to log on before my prejudices had their morning coffee. For one thing, Julie has a cat. And interesting thoughts and amusing self-deprecations--all of which I've enjoyed throughout the history of our friendship. And on top of it all, she has these cool and original and honest and spiritual friends, whose blogs she had linked to, as I discovered on a day when I had too much time on my hands. I had met Erin and Kate on one (or several) of my numerous visits to DC, so I read theirs, wrote to Kate, and got a note back saying, "When are you going to start a blog of your own?"

I started to write back and say I had nothing to say, but it would have all been false modesty, so I deleted it. After all, I spend half my free time talking to friends (it's not like I'm silent in life), and though I went into my profession in part for the creativity, challenge, and academic calendar, I have to admit that I did choose a career (teaching) where basically I stand around talking about what I think I know, or asking about what I want to know at least.

And the other factor, which maybe is the biggest one, was that I had decided last December that I wanted to get serious about writing. I had been thinking about "what I want to do with my life," and was happy to realize that if I could do anything in the world, I'd probably want to do exactly what I'm doing. Except that I'd really want to write more.

So this is my little practice space. In part because to answer Kate's question by saying I have nothing to say would be to dishonor what God has done for me, to ignore all those parts in the Bible where he says to remember what he's done: Write it on your doorpost, tie it on your hands, pile up these stones so you'll never forget, and others will ask you, hey, what's up with the sign, the string, the stones?