I miss writing.

Time, vision, focus, and motivation have all been in short supply in the past several years. Life has been full of fast balls, curve balls…and I don’t know any more kinds of pitches, but it feels like we’ve experienced most of them! Writing has been a way that I can “hit the ball” thrown at me, and put it in its proper place. I can think about the circumstance, the challenge, the struggle. I can observe it, ask myself what effect it is having on me, hold it up against the truth of Scripture, and speak Truth to myself as I encounter it — whatever “it” may be.

Writing through challenges has been helpful for me, and I hope helpful for whoever reads what I write, as I have always tried to bring hard things back to the hope-giving promises of God. These past years, I have still been here encountering and observing and clinging to His promises. But I have not given myself the space or permission to write.

Writing is a way for me to process my life. But life circumstances and personal choices have gotten in the way of allowing myself the time and space and platform to write. I have largely stepped away from social media, which has been overall a positive decision. But it comes with some downfalls, one of which being that I can’t utilize my social media space to write as I have in the past.

Furthermore, I’m not comfortable broadcasting the deeper struggles of my children, of my family, and of my own heart because I feel the responsibility to walk a line of vulnerability while still protecting the privacy of those I love. These are the things I long to write about because they are the things I need to process. But I am not willing because I feel I have neither the right nor the freedom to do so. So, I don’t write.

But I miss writing.

Where does that leave me?

I’ve decided to use my blog space as a place to write. But for now, I am going to write about more superficial things. I thought it would be fun to focus on some insights that we have learned over the years of traveling as a family. From time to time, I have had questions about certain activities and have not always been able to find the specific answers I was looking for via google (whether it be on TripAdvisor, Reddit, or local forums). So, my plan is to share some tips about those situations so that I can satisfy my desire to write while also hopefully adding some value to the internet.

Hopefully my words may be useful to someone who may be searching for those answers. But also, I hope it will be helpful to me. I want to write, so I am going to make space and time to write. Not necessarily to process deep things, but to give myself an outlet and a space to use my voice. Thanks for hanging in there with me.