Trying New Things and a Giant Thank You

When my husband first started encouraging me on this blogging journey, my biggest worry was that I wouldn’t have anything to say. Or, at least, I wouldn’t have anything to say that people would want to read. After all, I was “just” a stay at home mom. I didn’t have any special training, fancy letters after my name, or expertise in any one particular subject. I was that mom who, when her friends and family members would call to excitedly talk about a promotion or raise, would be all, “I organized the kids’ closets by color, today.”

Please don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love that I get to stay home and raise my children. I have been a working parent, and while I really enjoyed my job, I felt strongly that I needed to be home full time while my kiddos were young. Obviously that’s not to say that I think that’s what every mom needs to do to be a good mom, but at that time, for me, that is what I needed to do. Thankfully, it’s something we were able to make work, even though at the time it was scary to lose half of our income.

So, when Aaron nagged gently encouraged me to start writing, I was pretty dubious about what to share. I’ll never forget what he said. He told me that we have a good family – not a perfect one – but a good one. And people need to see good. People need to see that there is hope for the family – even though it seems like the American family is falling apart everywhere we look. Sometimes it seems like all you read and watch these days is about brokenness, and people need to see pieces of light, too.

After many late night conversations, a lot of prayer, and a pro-con list (because that’s what I do), Outnumbered was born.

It’s been incredibly nerve-wracking, exciting and liberating to be able to write and have people care to read it. Each and every comment people have left has been treasured, whether it’s been on my blog, Facebook page, or even in person. So thank you, thank you, thank you so much for reading.

I just rolled the ticker marker over to 800 followers this week. Woohoo!

It probably seems small for some of my much higher-reaching blogging friends, but I’m pretty excited by the milestone – especially when my first follower was my husband, followed closely by my mom.

Since you’ve all made it this far, and because I figure I should share where I’m going since you have gotten me to where I am, I have some news I would like to share.

FIRST

I was very excited to have one of my devotions published in the Focus on the Family Magazine. I’ve never made a secret about my opinions on inviting God into your marriage, and having something I wrote in a feature about growing together spiritually is a huge honor.

You can see that article here. There are a number of other devotions in the series they put together, so I encourage you to look around the site for those.

SECOND

I’ve been occasionally submitting content to various other platforms, and I recently got an original piece picked up by a site that I really respect. If it does well they will even pay for it – which is a pretty big deal for a stay at home mom/blogger who does almost everything for free! You can expect to see me doing a happy dance soon when that comes out – I’ll be sure to share it with you all.

THIRD

I’m working on something huge (for me) right now, something that I’ve wanted to do for years – it’s pretty much the most terrifying thing I’ve done since that time I thought it would be fun to have a fourth kid. I imagine I feel the same way I would if I was going to go sky diving. Excitement, exhilaration, and the fear of falling flat on my face in a giant puddle of unrecognizable goo. I’m not really ready to say what it is yet because it’s just too close to my heart right now, but keep me and my “goo thing” in your prayers, if you don’t mind!

Thank you again for reading my stories, it’s been a pretty great ride so far.

Love,

Sandra