A Voice Lost in the Noise

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I kept shaking my head in amazement the rest of the Allume weekend. I was amazed that God used Mary DeMuth to whisper in my ear. I felt my wobbly legs grow stronger from the infusion of confidence. As soon as I dared look around at the talent in the room, I was walking on spaghetti strings of jello again barely able to stand on my own two feet.

It was awe-inspiring to rub elbows with four hundred or so bloggers, including some with rock star status, every time I ventured out of my room. According to wordpress.com, “Over 391 million people view more than 3.8 billion pages each month.” Wordpress alone drives over fifty-seven million sites.

Can you see what I'm thinking? The four hundred of us gathered weren't a spit in the internet ocean. If we weren't even a spit . . . I was, and will always be, lost in a sea of noise. Not only am I lost, I am behind and running to catch up on all things technically related to blogging. While waiting for the next keynote speaker, I slunk down in my chair and began to make peace with myself for the five minutes of every week I can do so.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Darren Rouse was sitting in the lobby when I arrived. Here's the thing, you might not know who he is, but in my community of bloggers, he's a rock star. He's one of those who makes a real living blogging – and by real I mean in the style which I will never be accustomed. He'd been on the elevator with me a few times because we were lodging on the same floor of the hotel. If you saw him on the street, you'd have no clue he was a rock star because he looks and acts like, well, everyman. He was funny and shy and real about his faith.

This humble man, who lives in the stratosphere of success, flew all the way from Australia to tell us about his life as a pastor and how he discovered blogging. He recognized the power of the medium and wanted to harness it. It was 2001. Know what he thought at the time? He thought he was “behind the curve” and that he would never catch up. In fact, his first blog post got zero views while his review of a camera model he used on a trip went ballistic.

His words rang in my ears like the bells of Notre Dame. Darrel Rouse thought he was behind the curve ten years ago. Oh my fraidy cats. He knew exactly how I felt. And then, God used Darren Rouse to whisper in my ear a second time that weekend:

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

“You don't need a huge following to change one life, and if you change one life, your blog is big enough.”

This theme over-arched the entire weekend, but his comment was the one that tied all the related ones together.

Here's the truth: I am always going to be lost in the noise. I am never going to catch up. I can bob and weave with Facebook as they alter  algorithms and force brand pages to pay to be seen. Facebook holds the winning hand. I will disappear unless you work hard to see me and my updates.

I can set goals and take classes to grow my blog. I can figure out how to create printable pages, produce my own ebooks, and ask other bloggers to help promote my pages. I can do those things because of the gracious and wonderful community of bloggers God is allowing me to befriend. I can chase the blogging world's definition of success and not change a thing in the world.

I have felt the frantic push-pull of the 'do this – do that to reach blogging success and generate an income'. Believe me, I feel it even more now that I face life as an aging single parent whose last teenager will soon fly the nest. I tell myself I have no current job skills and that 'all' I can do is write, so I better figure out how to make this blogging-to-'real'-writer scheme work and work quickly. Can you feel my anxious frenzy growing?

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Toward the end of his talk, Darren told the story of how he watched a little girl eat cake, the same kind of cake he had only just finished savoring bit by bit, tiny bite by bite. After an approving nod from her mom, she grabbed the cake with bare hands and devoured it in seconds becoming a chocolatey mess in the process.

He then encouraged us to give up the fork and gobble Christ without reserve because those of us who gorge ourselves on him will live. That's when I knew what I've always known. Life is hard. There are bills to pay even as an uncertain future looms.

Yes, I want to be a rock star famous writer who travels and speaks and rubs elbows with bloggers and authors like Darren Rouse and Mary DeMuth till I think, “Hmm...this is normal. This is what I do.” But the only thing that will matter when the world ceases to spin is the one life that was changed, or not, because of what I wrote.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

I will always be invisible, and this blog will last for only a season. If you feel invisible today because words harshly spoken convinced you you are, I see you. Your pain is real. Your loneliness is real. Your need is real. I know the one who can be there in the midst of that pain. I hope you meet him here in the midst of my messy, needy life. I hope you feast fork-less and with abandon because you meet him here.

John 6:57 (Amplified Bible) Just as the living Father sent Me and I live by (through, because of) the Father, even so whoever continues to feed on Me [whoever takes Me for his food and is nourished by Me] shall [in his turn] live through and because of Me.