Everything there is to read on successful blogging (and there is plenty to read on it) says that you ought to offer something to your readers, have contests if necessary, change it up, but not too much, but above all, be consistent.

This is one reason I will never have a successful blog.

I regularly do battle with myself on this one. Because, see, I am desperate for your approval. The approval of the reader, the web, and the community. I am desperate to stand out and say something worth saying so much and so often, that one day an offer comes in, a book deal, something. Anything really. Anything to make me feel successful at something.

A friend and I talked about dreams the other day and I confessed, with joy, that I'd let most of my drift away. I haven't got them anymore. I have given up the hope of birthing children. I have given up hope of being picked from a crowd of women as one man's own. I have decided that it is better to work for an international ministry than to travel internationally. I have decided that having my own home is too much tying me to the earth. I have learned that all of the things I wanted to be identified by are ultimately lesser gods and I want the Only Wise God, our Savior completing my story.

I have done this with joy, so please don't pity me. I choose to live today, instead of borrowing what might never come tomorrow.

But the dream of being a successful writer is never one far from me. I hone my craft and harbor my words with the hope that someday I can put together sentences that make enough sense to be bound in a book and sold in stores. I don't crave fame, don't care to be known, can't stomach the thought of book tours ands autographs. So when I ask myself why it is that I want this, I come up empty.

The deep truth is that I don't know why I write.

If its only purpose was that it is helpful tool for me to work out my salvation, this can be done privately (and isn't, you should know). If it was only to bless others, then I would surely attempt to be more consistent at it. The truth is that it ought to be done to give glory to God and most times, I don't think that it does.

Here is the truth, reader: the truth is that I wrestle with this subject a lot, and not only as it pertains to writing or keeping a blog or communicating truth. I struggle to reconcile what I do with why I do it.

This is the tension we're called to and Colossians makes it clear to me every day for weeks now: we can love God, but not hold fast to the Head from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

I grow, too often, from the working out of my salvation, from the blessing of others, from the communication of His gospel, and less so from Him alone.

I gauge my growth on outward signs (and this not all bad, we are grateful for sanctification!) and give less glory to God and more to my will, my stamina, and my own wisdom.

The truth is that I cannot ever have successful blog because I am human, and this human suffers from an inability to muster up the will to be disciplined about writing. Or anything else for that matter.

And I think I'm learning to be okay with that. I think I am.

Because He is not interested in my mustering efforts or consistency. He is not impressed by my faithfulness or my fervor. He is interested in my heart, in plumbing the depths of it, in reaching in and changing me from the inside out.

"He must increase. I must decrease."