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My Struggle to Find Focus — Biblical Truth for a Writer & Business Owner

I’ll be honest with you — I’ve been struggling with my writing lately. I’ve wondered if my content is relevant to your needs. Am I only adding to all the noise on this crazy internet! Should I write more? Less. Should I quit?!

Times Change –

A lot has changed since I began writing ten years ago! Back then, writing a blog was the way to go. We shared our hearts and lives when the mood struck.

Now I write alongside my Life Coaching practice. And online business gurus tell us to post religiously, send newsletters weekly, add to that daily Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram — basically invade every bit of your world!

I find it pretty annoying when businesses won’t stay out of my inbox for more than a few days — and I’m guessing you do too!

I’m tired of being told I need some amazing, incredible, easy, or fast — trick, gadget, schedule, book, or course — in order to be a better person, writer, mom, wife, plus be instantly wealthy. I’m sure you get my drift!

So I won’t add to the racket. I’ll be writing the way you and I like it!

Ahhhh…. 😊

With 600 million blogs and 1.9 billion websites out there — really! 😯 — it’s hard for a writer or business owner to make sure readers can find them.

All the “to-dos” and “shoulds” of online business marketing make my “follow-the-rules” personality a bit crazy! And I want to get off the crazy train!

But then…
➡️ I remember how much I enjoy making friends on the internet.
➡️ Helping you live above the noise and realize your value before God motivates me to press on.
➡️ I know you can love your family well and actually enjoy being a wife, mom, and professional! And I want to help you do just that!

Biblical Truth for a Writer –

While sorting through my conflicting thoughts, praying, reading, and seeking counsel, I read the book of Titus. I was again reminded that I am the “older woman” Paul speaks of. (Now, I’m not completely thrilled to have earned this title 😊 but it’s where I am in life!) And because of my age and experience, I have a clear calling to meet the Titus 2 commands.

According to Scripture, older women are to encourage / teach / train younger women to:

– Love their husbands — Love isn’t always easy and we need ideas and help to do this well.
– Love their children — It can be really hard being a momma!
– Manage / keep their homes — It’s a tough job but it has to be done.

All of this so “that the Word of God may not be dishonored.”

So I’m accepting God’s call for this journey.

I’ll use my gift of writing — my decades spent journaling to capture and chew on thoughts and ideas — to help “younger” women (that’s you!) love the life they’ve been given. And that includes all the emotional and spiritual digging-in-the-dirt details of how that actually looks in real life.

If you’re an “older” women, I want this to be a place you feel comfortable having conversations about life in middle age: menopause, empty nest, relationships in marriage after the kids are gone, finding purpose, and more. This season of life can be quite unsettling to navigate. We all need friends to help smooth the bumps in the road.

Miscellany –

You’ll find me in your inbox once or twice a month.
I’ll occasionally link to a few products I think you’ll find useful. But only things I use and value and hopefully create soon.
But mostly — I’m offering you some hard-won wisdom and discernment in the realm of wife-dom, mothering, personal, spiritual, and business life, along with home management and care.
Schedule a Discovery Call to find out how Life Coaching can help you navigate life and decisions.

Please reach out if you have something you’d like to get a conversation started on. I’d love to hear from you! Honestly, this online world can be lonely.

Another thing, please share my posts with women you care about. I’m sure they need encouragement, too!

Thanks for your time.
Blessings and prayers as you seek to live above the noise!

PS – Check out a few of my favorite finds below!

Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, ⁵to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored. Titus 2:3-5

Encouragement from Emily Freeman!
If you haven’t discovered her podcasts, you’re in for a treat.
She’s calm and balanced and just what I need to center me in God’s will! Enjoy!

How To Organize A Brain Dump
Are you tired of holding your whole to-do list in your head!?
Well, here’s a great post on brainstorming I think you’ll find helpful.

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More Blogs, More Noise – How To Choose?

By livingabovethenoise

Online Noise

The online culture is noisy and distracting: Someone wants you to grab a cookbook or a podcast or program to give you 10 easy ways to solve some problem. It can take hours of sifting through information to find a quality solution. Therefore, the last thing I want is to add to that already noisy place in your life. But I also understand how hard it is to find our way in this complicated world. We need help!

When I began writing, I had learned to manage my home and family and I wanted to share what I experienced. But as time and life kept growing me, it became more difficult to offer input when I saw how much I had yet to learn! So I took lots of blogging breaks to catch up, soak in life, and make sure I wasn’t wasting your time. But I’m realizing I’ll never know everything and if I stop writing, I’ll have missed any opportunity to offer encouragement and ideas with you. So I’m choosing (again) to use my love of writing and sharing to offer quality content to help you on your life journey as others have helped me.

A blog author should avoid telling you that you’re doing life wrong or suggest there’s only one way to live it. That’s my goal. I want to offer ideas and, most importantly, to get you to ask your own questions in order to discover the answers you need. I’ll ask you to think — in a culture that often tries to get us to stop thinking.

Look for Quality Blogs –

It’s Good To Borrow From One Another

It’s easy to forget we have a plethora of personalities, histories, and patterns learned from our families. In spite of social media, or possibly because of it, this independent culture we live in can make us feel very alone or pressured to do things foreign to what we know. That can be good and bad. So how do we know who to listen to? One word — Cautiously.

It can be downright scary and confusing to navigate life alone when no one reaches out. We do need help. Enter the blog world, but do it with a healthy perspective — one where we share in each other’s burdens and help one another through life. I love what a pastor friend reminded me…

“We borrow from one another.”

Ideas, views, strategies, spiritual strength. We become so much more capable when we puzzle through problems and learn to think through our days having others encourage us to consider our own possibilities.

My goal in blogging is to reach out, add input, ideas, and advice to living on planet earth. To remind you (as I’m reminding myself!) to seek to do God’s will, trusting you’ll do better as you gain experience, all the while adapting to the everyday onslaught of new ideas on how to do this thing called life.

Bloggers may convince you to buy their product to make your life easier so they can make their life more profitable. Beware. Life doesn’t have to be so complicated. Go for quality and not quantity. You’ll find me offering ideas (and a few well-chosen products) that I’ve found helpful in focusing on what’s most important while navigating your busy days. I hope to encourage you to stop listening to the wrong voices. To pray. To listen for God’s Spirit prompting you, not social media or online “friends.”

Simply — Be still. Listen. Think. Then take a step.

Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

Just ONE Thing You Need To Know!

By livingabovethenoise

I’ve noticed something in my inbox lately. A multitude of blog posts claiming things like: “6 Things You Need to Know,” “5 Super Simple Habits,” “7 Ideas That Will Rock Your World.” Okay, I get it! Someone out there wrote “5 Best Ways to Boost Your Blog” telling bloggers to catch their reader’s attention by offering simple solutions.

Well, I’d love to hop on the bandwagon, but I just can’t get myself to do it. I just can’t follow the crowd, no matter how many more views I get.

Why?

Because I’ve tried too many of those “better ways!” Oh, they worked for a while, but I got tired. I’m only human. And so are you! Without God and His ways at the core of all we do, we will always burn out.

I blog to share about God, about His great love in sending Jesus to rescue us. You’ll read of His many lessons in faith and character in this crazy world, about how much better our lives will be if we follow Him and not everyone else’s ideas.

Yes, you will read my ideas, my lessons. But my goal is to use those lessons to lead you to God. Not to me. Not to some other method. Just. To. God. I’ll share tips and ideas for life as a wife, mom, friend…but the foundation for them all is and always will be from His Book. He made things to work best when they are done His way.

So, I lied. There is the ONE thing you need to know – the ONE way to a better life…

God!

Simple. Matter of fact. Honest. Beautiful. Sometimes hard to do. But all the time the best choice.

God.

Now that we have that settled, we can talk about all the creative ways to live well!

Blessings as you seek His face and His ways. Daily. Minute by minute. Choice by choice.

Love you all! And so does God!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones. Proverbs 3:5-8

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. 2 Corinthians 13:13

There’s More To Life …..

By livingabovethenoise

Life…there are a few things we know about it. And there are a bazillian things we don’t. These unknowns are the things that have slowed me down in recent years.

As I began my “family” walk, aka marriage and children, I thought I could control this life. I thought, rather naively I might add, that I could plan or work or study or control what and when and where my family would end up in life.

And it worked for awhile….or so I thought. But all you have to do is read Joni Eareckson Tada’s story, or Elizabeth Elliott’s, to know my idea was ridiculous. The life of a human is filled with “what if’s”….so what if a major accident or trial wasn’t in the cards for me? Then couldn’t I plan and know what life would entail?

Seasons

I was just looking at my Google Analytics, something I don’t do very often for sanity sake. One thing I noticed was the age of most blog readers. The largest reader category was between 25-34 years old. After that age, the stats drop off quickly. Of course, one reason is the lower use of computers after the age of 50-60, but I know it’s mostly due to the changes in life purpose and goals.

Remove grief and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, because childhood and the prime of life are fleeting. Ecclesiastes 11:10

There are a few reasons for this change in priorities:

Discovering that you can’t learn it all, that you’re not invincible.
Realizing that real-life people need you, yes, more than cyber friends.
Awakening to the fact that you aren’t going to live forever, so use your time wisely.

I know these sound a bit like shooting myself in the foot as a blogger, but I have to wonder what the best outcome is for me as a blogger, and for you as a reader. What God is showing me can best be summarized from the book of Ecclesiastes. Take time to ponder these points.

Life is short.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Life is all about and for God.
The excess devotion to books is tiresome.

All things are wearisome; man is not able to tell it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done. So there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:8-9

Live

Life was given to us to live. To live for God’s glory, not our own. So, please use it well! Please read, in print or on the screen, that which edifies and encourages you to grow right where God has you.

There will be twists and turns in your life. Spend time contemplating what God may be teaching you, not looking to another blogger or friend to see what they’re doing. Yes, we can learn from one another, but if we’re spending more time with authors of blogs or books rather than God Himself, we will burn out. He will reveal our need for Him. Don’t underestimate His power to work in your life, or to show you just what He has for you. He might use a blogger’s experience to help you in your own situation, but mostly, the Holy Spirit was given to us as a teacher and guide. Don’t underestimate this gift Jesus gave us as He exited earth!

I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. Ecclesiastes 3: 12-14

Take Time

Take time to listen to God. Listen for His Spirit. He will instruct you in the way you should go. Listen well. This is one reason I’ve been quiet in the blogging world. I’m trying to listen, to hear how God wants me to spend my time, to be sure I’m not wasting my reader’s time. To glorify Him in all I do.

So will I still blog? For now, I think so. But as I’m listening to God’s still small voice, I hear Him reminding me to take time. Time for Him. Time for my children and grandchildren. Time for my neighbor. Time for real interaction with breathing humans. I know you who are reading this are breathing, yet without interaction and visual input, it’s really hard to truly share life and lessons. For now, I will continue to write, if only for me to process my thoughts and lessons being learned. And if it blesses my children someday, or even you today, I will write until God shows me it’s time to stop.

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts today. Maybe a bit of rambling….but isn’t that what friends are for? And here’s another great song to lift your soul today!

Christ’s Love to you and yours as we enter a busy holiday season. Enjoy life! Enjoy time with family and friends. Take time to love your neighbors. And don’t forget God in the busyness, for He is the true Giver of it all!

In addition to being a wise man, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge; and he pondered, searched out and arranged many proverbs. The Preacher sought to find delightful words and to write words of truth correctly.

The words of wise men are like goads, and masters of these collections are like well-driven nails; they are given by one Shepherd. But beyond this, my son, be warned: the writing of many books is endless, and excessive devotion to books is wearying to the body.

The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil. Ecclesiastes 12:9-14