This is an updated repost from 10/11/2014.
As a blog, 1Glories has been around for a handful of years and absolutely nothing had come of it until recently. There had been few readers, no following, and no cohesion despite genuine efforts to replicate the blogging successes I had experience with other topics. Along with personal frustration, there was a lot of wasted time, effort and dreaming to firmly solidify my perception of doom and failure. That’s the conclusion I had started to accept until an unexpected letter I was writing to my daughters turned into a letter to myself, changed my life and brought renewal to the mission.
Before I explain that any further, I should point out this post was in response to the day four challenge issued by Jeff Goins to be an “intentional blogger” for 21 days back in 2014. This challenge came at just the right time (which not coincidentally is exactly how God likes to work). Jeff challenged the nearly 1,000 bloggers participating in the challenge to write the story of their blog.
So without further ado, I give you the abbreviated story of 1Glories.
As you might have guessed, it includes the aforementioned letter to my daughters. I was sitting next to my eldest daughter in her bedroom as I awaited her going to sleep one evening. Instead of playing a mindless game on my iPad, I started tapping out a letter to all three of my daughters. My intention was to share insight into my life and offer some key life lessons I wanted them to know in case I never got the chance to personally do so.
This new growth was rooted in the timbers of my family’s cabin, which was originally built in 1849. It shot up during a brief period of time when the cabin had been disassembled and relocated before being rebuilt. It’s a great example of how all things are capable of breathing new life.
After she had fallen asleep, I continued writing. It had been a long time since I was in such a creative groove and it felt naturally uplifting. Over the next couple days, I kept writing. By the time I had finished, without realizing it, I had examined and submitted to a call from God on my life. That call centered squarely on 1Glories. And I had written a book about it.
The book became the recently released Listen Up Kids: Foolish Dreams, Syncing with God nd Running to Win, which shows many of the ways God works in our lives to perfectly prepare us to serve Him and live according to His will. In my case, it involves lessons learned in baseball, personal shame, writing, and a near death experience. These building blocks were part of my personal journey toward striving for a much higher purpose. Through life’s triumphs and adversities, the events of my story prove we can go from being one of God’s broken chosen to personal fulfillment in Christ while living a life that seeks always to Listen Up.