Abandoning the stories I want to write to Write the story I must write

​I am going to disappear for the month of December. Not like literally disappear - poof into thin air - just disappear from Facebook.

Which begs the question: do you still exist if you disappear from Facebook?? 😊🤷‍♂️

Five years ago, I started on a journey I didn't know I was starting on. There was no plan. There was no map. I don't know whose idea the journey was. Knowing that used to matter to me. It doesn't anymore.

I just know I've been on a journey. And that journey has been the journey of discovering me.

Most days that journey has been more hell than joy. That's part of the process of pealing back the layers of who you've been pretending to be to discover who you really are. The pretend world is exhausting, but many days exhausting is much easier to deal with than hell.

A friend sent me a stuffed toy onion on this journey. Every time I look at it I'm reminded that pealing back layers often comes with tears.

The better part of the last three years of that journey I've showed up here in the mornings. Writing. Many days I have been writing very directly about the journey. I think other days I've been distracting myself from the journey.

Either way, my mornings here have become important to me. They've become a source of peace.

I've always been grateful for the folks who've expressed my showing up here has mattered to you. That has been a gift.

On several occasions, many of you have suggested I need to write a book. In many ways, showing up here has been my way of writing a book. But in other ways, in some very big ways, it's been a way of AVOIDING writing that book.

Because I show up here writing the things I really do want to write about. The things I would want to put in a book.

But the last couple of years, I don't go to bed thinking about the things I want to write. I don't wake up thinking about them. And it's not thoughts about what I want to write about that frequently interrupt my day.

What interrupts my nights and my mornings and my days is this voice telling me the story I have to write, not the one I want to write. It's a voice telling me I will never have permission to write what I want until I write what I must.

That article I wrote earlier this week about turning our shoulds into musts - well that was to me.

The article I wrote this week about the idea of bringing something new into your life isn't clearing out your closet it's transforming your mind - that was to me.

The article I wrote about intentionally shrinking your problems and not sitting back waiting for them to shrink - that was to me.

Well, for the next 31 days, that is what I'm going to do. I'm going to step into my story with hopes of forever transforming my mind by taking the story I've known I should write and making it the story I must write.

Because I must.

I don't know what will become of the story once I write it. I suppose in many ways the story will decide that.

I ask you to think about me. To pray for me. To know in the mornings when I'm not here that I'm sitting at a keyboard writing the story I must write. Know that I've put off writing the story I must write because writing what I want to write is so much easier.

But one thing the journey has taught me is easy isn't the end game.

But know and trust - because I surely do - that once I write the story I must write, the stories I want to write will come with more freedom. They will come with more joy and less hell.

At least that's my hope. And my prayer.

I pray blessings upon you and your families this Christmas season. May God bless you and keep you and may the face of his sweet and precious child always shine upon you.