What I Discovered While My Blog Was Sleeping

It's hard to believe 12 weeks have evaporated since I embarked on what turned out to be an unfathomably rejuvenating blogging and Twitter break.

At the beginning of March I could barely pen a sentence, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. After some serious soul searching, I finally recognized that my writing life, and to a lesser extent my home life, was out of balance. I realized that I need to more efficiently control distractions, my time, and the flow of information fire-hosing into my face. I needed to regain my focus.

Can you relate? Do you ever become so distracted by all the things you feel you should do, your primary goals suffer?

Sometimes we need to reevaluate the big picture. We need a time-out to think, pray, and talk with trusted friends. We need to allow God to realign whatever is off track.

And sometimes, that means letting go of the things that interfere.

While I'm ready to dip my toe back into the blogging ocean, I can't say the same for Twitter. Twitter's plethora of fascinating people and conversations enthrall, absorb and (unfortunately) totally sidetrack me. So, for now, I won't be going back. Initially I felt sad over my decision, and though I’m still occasionally tempted to jump back the land of tweeting, wisdom demands that I abstain. Ouch.

Of course for those of us writers building the all important platform, my blog break and my Twitter move might appear foolish. However, if we are wise, we will learn to understand and work within our own limitations. We’ll learn that balanced lives are productive lives. But most importantly, we’ll give ourselves permission to do what works best for us—and we’ll extend that grace to others.

This hiatus has nourished and re-calibrated my soul, given me much needed time with friends and family, and enabled me to work on other writing projects. It gave me time to just be. It allowed me to focus afresh on my goals, hear from God clearly, and fine-tune according to His plan.

The bottom line is I'm an imperfect woman prone to distraction, serving an awesome God who deserves my very best. I've learned that often when God leads us, it's counter intuitive. But it's always exactly what we need. Even if it means saying goodnight to some things, and goodbye to others.

How about you? Is some area of your life out of balance? Do you need to reevaluate and regain your focus? Leave me a comment and I'll pray for you this week.