I’m coming out of my cocoon, shedding skin.   I’ve never blogged before!  This is a first step for me, and I take it with a bit of timidity to be honest.  I do enjoy face to face conversation.  I like to know who will be reading my words, or much better, hearing them.  I look forward to a live response – a smile, a tear, a puzzled frown, a hand reaching out in compassion or to the face looking back in shock!  In my former “preaching life”, I certainly faced many of those responses to my words, and more!  But here I am writing for the first time, in a blog that anyone in the world can read. 

I will never know if my words landed in a place that brought a tear, a smile, or a need to touch.   I am, however,  encouraged by all those out there who have blogged before me.   Writers fill the pages of a book or internet with their trembling vulnerability.  I admire that so much.   I hope I will write like that sometimes at least- just put myself out here on this page, and offer a gift in the telling and the reading of my simple stories.  The gift is unwrapped in our somehow feeling a little less alone as we do connect in this way.  Somewhere a writer has been able to risk enough to say something that makes me want to reach out and touch you, and say “me too”.   I guess if I have any hope for my new blogging life, it’s just that.  I hope you’ll laugh, or cry, and sometimes say, “me too”, agree or disagree, and that through our writing and reading and responding, we can all feel a little less alone.  There, I did it.  I’m out here on a limb, but the tree is strong that holds me.  There’s no going back into the cocoon now!  I wonder, what are you experiencing that might be similar?  Is there a new creativity emerging?  Come on out on this strong limb.  The tree will hold us as we learn to live outside that cocoon now.