Apparently I have been blogging for seven years.

I wouldn’t have guessed that, but it sounds about right.  TG is finishing up 7th grade, and I began blogging while she was in kindergarten.  She’s a very different person than she was seven years ago, and so am I.

In the past seven years I’ve not just had multiple jobs but multiple careers.  I’ve visited new states and even a new continent.  The scope of my blog changed from solely focusing on my children to chronicling my exhaustion as a teacher to simply expressing my random thoughts.

I added pictures.  My first few years of blogging were entirely text-based, but now I include images with almost every post.  My mom doesn’t like it when I don’t have an image, so I’ll have to keep that up.  It’s important to keep your mom happy.

The biggest changes, I think, have been internal ones.

I’m gentler with myself.

I’m more prone to think of myself as a writer, in large part because I spend a lot of my life writing.  While I may not write copiously, I certainly write regularly.  I can’t remember the last time I didn’t write anything in the course of a day.  I suppose I’m getting better at writing.  I’m certainly less fearful of revealing myself through my words.

I’m happier.

The happiness trajectory, however, has been difficult.  In the past seven years I’ve had some intensely unhappy times.  I’ve ridden waves of vacillating emotions that I never knew existed.  My health has betrayed me, as well as people I’ve trusted.  Loved ones have been ill and others have died.

In short, life has happened over the past seven years.

And God has seen me through it.

And He’s shown me that writing makes me happy.  Even if I must pour out a lament through my fingertips, the very act of putting words to my feelings and recording them brings solace.  And peace.  And joy.

I’ve grown a lot in the past seven years.  Thank you for joining my journey.