New Beginnings for a New Year

I hadn't much thought that a new year would bring about many changes. And I suppose in most ways the first two weeks of the year have met my expectations thoroughly.

Except that I wasn't expecting my email to be hacked.

And I certainly wasn't expecting my list of more than 500 contacts to be permanently deleted.


I can't say that I believe anyone enjoys their email to be hacked or to lose all sorts of information that would be hard to replace. I wasn't overjoyed at first either. Until I realized that this would give me a fresh start. Somehow, the idea of a new beginning gave me a lot of peace and perhaps even a bit of excitement about starting over. And quite honestly, I'm hoping that this fresh start will give me something else ... a cure for writer's block.

It was almost a year ago that the Lord gave me a writing ministry. Well, I like to think of it as a ministry. Mainly, the Lord just allows me to write down the thoughts He gives me while I go about my ordinary, everyday life ... which involves nothing terribly exciting at all. Somehow though, the Lord likes to speak to me through the mundane things of this world. Dirty laundry and piles of unmated socks often teach me more about the Lord than a month of Sunday sermons. Don't ask me how helping my daughter choose her pet beta fish gave me insight into how God sees me. And just when I think I'm going to scream if one more child asks me for food to eat, God sends a hungry boy my way and teaches me a lesson about giving away food that fills more than just an empty stomach.

I suppose that I don't really understand it myself... why God shows up in the middle of my mundane little life. I'm an ordinary woman living a very ordinary life. There is nothing spectacular at all about me or about my family or our home. Yet I am privileged enough to have this amazing relationship with a very EXTRA-ordinary God.

If having a relationship with God isn't the most spectacular thing ever, then I can't imagine anything that would be spectacular. I get to hang out with the Creator of all I see (and all I don't see). I mean, He is right there in the laundry room with me, as I sort out the socks. All I have to do is tune myself to Him, reach out and talk to Him, ask Him to talk to me ... it doesn't matter what I am doing or where I am at. God's with me and I find that a rather incredible way to live my life.

And humbling ... because sometimes He lets me share the stories that make up my ordinary life.

Only sometimes I get scared that I don't have anything worth saying. Actually, it's most of the time. Lately, it has been all of the time.

For the past eight weeks or so, it has been the same way each time I sit down to write ... my hands poised over the keys of my laptop, anxious to type away, only to find that all those words I was thinking in my head are now gone like the wind.

Failure breeds fear. Fear breeds more failure. I've been in a writing rut and I only seemed to be digger myself deeper and deeper into a hole of my own making.

Until my email got hacked and I lost all of my contacts. Over the past 36 hours, God's been teaching me a lot through this not-so-fun circumstance. But the best part has been a new vision.

I've got a new email set up just for my writing contacts. And I'm going to be managing my newsletters through a free subscription service: MailChimp. Below you'll find a subscription form to sign up to receive The Paige Turner. I don't write according to a schedule, but about every 3-6 weeks I write a newsletter. Obviously 8-12 newsletters a year won't cause anyone's inbox to overflow! And it is still free. You can't beat free ... well, unless it is free and also encouraging. :)

If you've enjoyed getting my random newsletters in the past, please fill out a form and sign up! And don't hesitate to share this with a friend who might enjoy being encouraged as well. After all, I think that all ordinary women should be well-aquainted with a very EXTRA-ordinary God!

Blessings,
Paige


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