Sometime around Christmas of 2012 I decided to challenge myself by posting at least once a day for a year beginning January 1, 2013 to a newly created blog. From the beginning the toughest part of this challenge has not been posting “something” each day. Posting something I was truly happy with, now that has been a whole other bottle of ink. So, I made up my mind to make this year a training ground of sorts. I would allow myself to experiment with various styles of poems, devotions, short stories, editorials… really, any sort of writing that I could come up with in a day. I made it as fun and meaningful as I could, both for myself and anyone who cared to take the journey with me. I tried to not pay too much attention to the number of people reading or “liking” each post and I tried to give myself enough room to fail now and then. One of my favorite lessons to take away from the Bible is that God expects us to fall down once in a while. Anyone who has gained a reasonable amount of life experience knows that’s part of the process. I failed just enough to learn some, I think.

My prayer throughout this year has been that I might be an instrument of God to bring healing to those who need it. That sounds like a lofty goal, and I guess it is. If I may be bold enough to say so, I think followers of Jesus bear the responsibility of expressing healing words to those we encounter every day, whether they are spoken in what we might consider an artful manner or not. I don’t consider myself to be that sophisticated. Most of my training in writing has been to write clearly and succinctly. Conveying thoughts through the various means of creative writing can be tremendously therapeutic for the writer, as well as (it is hoped) for the reader.

So what will I do for 2014? To begin with, I will continue to post here at least once a week. Going from seven days to one will allow me to branch out into other projects. I would like to publish my first book before the year is up. Naturally, you want to know what kind of book I have in mind. Right now I’m considering that. Using a word I learned reading Mark Twain, I’m “cogitating.”

To those of you who followed this blog during the last year, I want to express my deepest appreciation. Thanks for reading, commenting and just hanging in there to read again when you had no idea where I was going. Thank you very much indeed.

© Joel Tipple
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