The summer before I was to start seminary I freaked out a little bit. I had been a teacher for so long. I had heard seminary was going to change me. I wasn’t sure where or who I would be when those three years were up. I liked who I was, I wasn’t sure I wanted that to change. A very wise woman, someone who I often admire and seek council from looked at my fear with me and asked, Abby, why would you want to spend three years doing something that would leave you exactly where you started? Don’t you want seminary to change you? Isn’t that what worthwhile things do?

She was right. And I went. And I was right. Seminary has changed me.

This past summer I tried to write again in the ways I used to write, earnest and honest and thoughtful, with run on sentences and too many conjunctions. I tried to re-ignite the pieces of my brain that had been stored away in order to complete a full time three year degree while also being a brand new pastor turned accidental church revitalizer. I was a little worried seminary had broken my brain forever,

Turns out, I was just tired.

When I started blogging I was neck deep in diapers with a spouse trying to complete a PhD. I wrote as a way to remember who I was and also figure it out. I needed to not lose myself in all my rolls. And it did all of that for me. I wrote my way right into seminary. I wrote my way into calling myself called.

The blogosphere was changing when I left it to go to graduate school, and it seems I barely recognize what I have come back to. I will, I think, attempt to write articles that get published in places other than this, that pass through the hands of editors and give me a “by-line” but also I want to remember that I write because I need to, because it makes me feel whole. I write so that I can know what I think, so that I can remind myself of the good God has for me.

I write so I remember what truth sounds like, what truth sounds like for me and maybe you too. I write to order my steps and make sense of the ones that already come. I write here mostly to remind myself that I don’t need anyone else’s permission to be who I am, even if that has changed, is changing, and I am not quite sure exactly how.