To Everything There is a Season

To everything (turn, turn, turn. . .what does that mean, anyway?)
there is a season (turn, turn, turn). . .

And I think my season of blogging has come to an end.  There are several reasons for this, but the top three are time (or lack thereof), focus, and relationship.

The first one is surely self-explanatory.  I've been borrowing blogging time from sleeping time for a little too long as it is.  I'm a homeschooling mother of five children--enough said, right?  And when I add that the youngest children are nearing the end of the napping years (prime blogging time) it surely makes even more sense.

Time segues nicely into focus as I'm not sure blogging is the best use of my limited time in this next season.  There are some other areas I need to focus on including the character training of my children, personal Bible study, involvement in our local homeschool community, and serving in our community just to name a few.  I've enjoyed blogging and would like to think I have encouraged people here and there as I've reflected on books I've read, what the Lord is doing in our family and homeschool, and along my faith walk with the Lord but I sense a changing and more immediate focus ahead.

It's time to focus on relationships in my immediate vicinity.  I pour a lot of myself onto my blog and frankly, don't get a lot back.  Few people comment and some just check in every once in a while to see what's up in my life without catching me up on what's up in theirs or engaging in any discussion.  Once I've digested my life or my thoughts about a book or my struggles in my daily christian walk on my blog, I am disinclined to rehash these topics again in face-to-face conversation.  As we've so recently moved and are developing new friendships, I am finding this practice to be damaging to establishing meaningful "real-life" relationships and I bear full responsibility.

I think it will be hard to completely give up blogging as sometimes I just need to sit down and write.  My plan is to leave this post up for a few days so I don't just "drop off the face of the. . .internet" and then I'll set my blog to private.  This will also help prevent my recent increase in spam comments (insert annoyed grimace).  I may still post once a week or so as the urge hits me, so if you would like to be invited to read my much-less-active blog, click on my profile to your right and use the button under "contact me" to give me your email address.  (I won't be inviting anyone without an explicit request to do so as I don't want to assume anything)

I still hope to stay in touch with my long-distance bloggy friends by reading (and commenting on) your blogs.  Until then, thanks for reading!