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Originally posted April 24, 2018

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I wish I could come up with a title, a word, anything, to describe what’s happened in my life over the last year. But I can’t. Nothing seems to capture the level of dismay that has settled over my life over the last 12 months.

I started this blog last summer in what felt like a step of obedience, naively hoping that maybe something I’d have to say would positively impact someone else. I thought I had a clear vision of what this writer/reader relationship was supposed to be about. But then something funny happened. I made my first post, oozing with inspiration and motivation, and then nothing else seemed to come. I kept waiting for a thought, a feeling, a message, something that I could wrap up nicely with a proverbial bow and present to the masses to fulfill my spoken commitment to offer some newfound revelation in the midst of all the internet garbage.

Oddly enough, the content of my own life seemed largely off limits. Mostly because I was still processing everything that was happening. We were in the middle of a storm – a storm with clouds too dense to see the sun shining through at that moment, and I was afraid of letting anyone see the weakness in my thoughts while I was processing, trying to find perspective; afraid people would think I should be more mature or have more faith or whatever. If I’d only known then what was still yet to come…

I thought I was creating a blog to write for everyone else, but after everything that’s happened over the last year, I think this was always supposed to be for me. I never imagined when I named this blog that I’d be describing my own life so accurately. Life is weird.

Beauty and Ashes

My life feels like a giant pile of ash right now. And I’ve decided to process the only way I know how – with words. Maybe you want to go on this journey with me as I try to discover some meaning in all the chaos and heartache of the last year, and maybe you don’t. All I know is that I have to get this out of me. I have to begin to make some sense of all these raw emotions before they overtake me. Framing my feelings with words is the only way I know to attempt to regain part of that which was stolen from me.

For those of you who tag along, thanks in advance. First stop – 2017.

-Shannon