going public.

Friends, we are in the process of moving away from South Asia for good, and with that the need to keep our blog password-protected is no more.

Frankly, I’m a little torn about this decision.  There are many things I appreciate about having a private blog; namely, I more-or-less know who’s looking at it, and can be a little less guarded with personal information.  But I now want to make our blog public again for two reasons:

1.  A few of my favorite blogs are those I’ve stumbled upon through a trail of links or through a friend.  They are written by people I will never meet and on whose posts I may never comment, but they encourage me to no end, and challenge me to think about the world in a different way.  This makes me wonder how many more such blogs are locked up behind passwords (for very good reasons probably), and wish I could discover them too.

Some of the things I share about myself are easier to disclose to a smaller, more intimate audience of friends and family.  I know you may think: Wow, Julie is just so natural at opening up about her personal life; would you believe me if I told you I experience a huge wave of anxiety after every single “written” blog post?  Immediately afterward, I want to take the post down, to cover up, to eat the words that expose more about my private world and private weaknesses than I want you to know.

And yet.

I can’t explain it, but I believe this honesty is part of my calling, part of why God wants me to write.  So I do it, again and again.

I think the ministry world—and perhaps the world in general—is in continual need of people who write honestly and transparently and hopefully about everyday life.  That is a desire I believe God is growing in me and something I want to share with people I may never have the privilege of meeting.

It’s also the reason I decided against a separate, public, “writing blog” at this point (besides the fact that juggling two blogs feels overwhelming).  I think the very mundane-ness of interspersing photos of our family and daily life with written essays encourages people to remember we’re just normal people and that life is as much about the little moments as the profound, earth-shattering ones.

2.  Along with point number one, I’m interested in eventually doing more writing in general, and perhaps submitting essays to different web publications.  But the little research I’ve done reveals that very few of these websites will accept submissions without an open blog address to direct readers to.  So as long as my blog is private, I am limited in the kind of writing I want to do.

So, there you have it.

In order to protect friends, I am in the process of going back over our entire blog and edited out specific references to the country we served in, national pastors’ names, and info about our teammates.  I’m doing this because it’s not just our story, but one we share with many others, and I want to respect their privacy.

Finally, in this season while it’s still just our little community, I’d love to ask you a question:

Is there anything you’d like to see or read more from us on the blog?  From either David or me?  Anything you’re curious about, wish we’d talk about more (wish we’d talk about less?)?

I know many of you don’t like leaving comments, so shoot me an email or Facebook message with your ideas.  We love hearing from you, I mean it.

I want to thank you so much—you, the faithful, who have stuck with us through the twists and turns of new blogs and remembering a password and not relying on your Google Reader for updates.

And now, I want to make reading our blog a little easier for you.  Very soon we’ll be ready to take off the password, and we’ll let you know when we’re public again.