Blogs. Bleh. Blo(eh)g. To the high minded, they are such a distasteful form of literature. So numerous. So common. So uncouth. So unedited. Gross. Plato once said that the masses can’t be educated. After almost 2500 years, Plato continues to be proven right about almost everything. I’ve often found myself thinking that, as an aspiring writer, I shouldn’t aim to be a New York Times Best Selling Author (jazz hands and applause required after that bio line) because all that says of an author is that his/her piece of writing was liked by a bunch of people. And what do a bunch of people actually know? Is their taste refined or are they just purchasing a book that glorifies their mundane, selfish lives? A bunch of people colluded with Hitler, and conspired to the Rwandan Genocide, and wore (gag) flared pants with black chokers, and (gasp) bought this one book about this one thing so now that writer is always called “a New York Times Bestselling Author.” Who was that one painter everyone talks about who never sold a painting in his life time but now has an entire hall in The Met? Authors don’t even make that much money selling books. It’s like a popularity contest. Which brings me back to my distaste for blogs. They are just too simple, too unrefined, too commonplace. I never wanted to write one, and I only read two that good friends of mine write (Tickled in NYC and The Wild Space). In the about page on this one it clearly says, this is not a piece of writing, this is a practice notebook that I post online so my mom can keep up with my life (or something like that).

I went to a college that basically focused on “The Essay.” My major (Politics Philosophy and Economics {PPE}) not-so-subtly was aimed at creating Op-Ed writers with intelligence, wit, and a firmly conservative underpinning. The essay was supposed to be art and influence, a finely crafted piece of writing. It was a thing I routinely failed at writing. I lacked form, I lacked substance, I lacked sentence structure, imagination, word count. Upon entering college, I thought I was okay at putting words to paper to say something; but, don’t tell that to my college writing 1, 2 or 3 professors. They all seemed to be of the same mind regarding my “essays.” I spent my semesters crying into my keyboard as I tried to fill word counts. And then, first semester my senior year, I casually quit trying. I was riding a severely broken ankle on the subway to and from class (with a transfer in Times Square during rush hour on crutches (no-weight) in business casual skirts and button downs because of that God. Damn. Dress. Code.). I just didn’t have the gumption to pour my tears into my papers because I was just trying to crutch up the stairs of the 34th Street Subway station (three flights) and make it to class before the lecture ended. And you know what? I earned the only A I ever got in college. From the hardest professor. Go Figure (but Thanks Dr. Tubbs!).

During my undergrad, we were told to aspire to influence “strategic institutions.” Not to aim for mediocrity among the masses but to compete with the Harvard Elite. I never felt like I could do that but I sure did try. My writing professors could tell you that.

Enter Five-Years Post Grad with a baby and a husband and a cPTSD diagnosis that comes with a swarm of Psych Medications and doctors. My ambition to influence strategic institutions is currently focused on convincing my toddler that he does, in fact, need to eat more than cheerios to survive and that I should actually get out of bed in the morning because depression can’t win anymore. While I was kickboxing the other day (for the sanity of my entire family), I felt the Lord say something to me. “You don’t have to kick the hardest to be strategic for me.” Wait, what? Of course I have to kick the hardest. It took a few jab-crosses for me to really hear that still, small voice. “You don’t have to best of the best, or elite, to serve my purposes for your life.” I don’t have to have a New York Times Best Selling Book (like I wanted one anyway, psh) to honor God with my days? Maybe all those high-minded, thought castles that I idolized are not where I actually belong, or am called to. Am I called to a place that I consider beneath me? No. Because I serve the Servant King for whom the last is the first (“humility gut check” is how I later described this kickboxing class to my husband).

And then last night happened. I was walking our neighborhood with my son in the always-the-longest-hour before Daddy gets home from work, and I remembered that Jesus had said, “Enter the Kingdom of God as little children” (or something like that). Which was certainly ironic because I couldn’t, in that moment, get my little child to enter the ice cream store where a double strawberry scoop was waiting for us. What did Jesus mean by saying “enter as little children”? Did he not know any little children when he said that? They don’t just “enter” anywhere.  Was he saying, as my son demonstrated last night, to slowly enter the kingdom of God by running in and out of the glass door with the bell and then abruptly sit down outside the door on the sidewalk and wave at all the trash trucks and ups trucks driving by until your mom picks you up (while your scream and kick) and carries you into the store, at which point you run screaming to the now closed door and press your face against the glass to wave bye to the commuters who got off the subway before your Daddy? Is Jesus saying, come to me even when you’re distracted by all the little things and the things the grown ups deem unimportant? On his own volition, my son 16-month old son high-fived a homeless man in a wheelchair today when we were walking to the park. And I made sure that I waited until the man’s wheelchair was around the corner before I soaked my toddler with hand sanitizer.

This whole mom thing makes me wonder if I do belong more among the masses than the elite, strategic institutions. Because all I have to do is what Jesus has asked of me. Which is humbling because I want to win everything. I spent my college years dreaming of being a somebody, and now I’m somebody’s mom and somebody else’s wife, and I do the dishes, and sneak wine to my mom friends on the playground. It’s humbling to realize that I’m not really anyone the world will take notice of. But also freeing, at least for my writing, because I can gleefully write a raw and rambling blog about the everyday mundane things I think and experience. Because my faith in Jesus dictates that I believe that the everyday, mundane, bodily, physical, emotional matters.

So consider this my womping fall from my high horse of sentence snobbery. I will (try) to read authors who are still breathing, and I will try to not snub all the mommy blogs.

Maybe Plato is right and that the masses can’t be educated–but I think, maybe, that they can be met right where they are. As Jesus continues to meet me right where I am. Immanuel. Not God floating somewhere else thinking high thoughts while I stumble around. So I’m going to try and become a regular ol’ blogger. I think I might call it “I’m a big dill” and put pickles all over it because someday I’ll have to learn to not take myself and my writing so seriously.