Still in Progress, But Finally Started

I have made a few blog attempts over the years.

One was called The Two Month Experiment, where I chronicled our attempt to spend as little money as possible for two months — making as much from scratch as I could — so we could figure out what we would really need for food storage and reset the budget a little.

Another one lasted a bit longer, and I may eventually link to it here or move some of those posts into the right categories.

But those were blogspot blogs.

They were pieces of the story, not the whole thing.

This site has been sitting in the back of my mind for a long time.

I have been in school for the past twelve years, and in the earlier years, I could still fit other things around it. But more recently, when my kids went to school, I started substitute teaching, and I had all the upper-level classes left to finish, there has not been a lot of extra space.

Still, the nudge to write never really went away.

Every time I attended an event and heard someone talk about writing, blogging, sharing your light, or finally putting your message somewhere people could find it, I felt that pull again.

Every time I went through something and thought, “There is something here I do not want to forget,” I felt it again.

And since I have not been as consistent with journal writing lately, part of this is simply me trying to record what God is teaching me before I lose it in the middle of real life.

I have had the name Effort & Grace™ saved for a long time. I am pretty sure one of my earlier blogs was even called Effort and Grace on blogspot. I have been hashtagging some of my posts with Effort and Grace for a while, almost like I was leaving breadcrumbs for the site I hoped I would eventually build.

For a long time, I thought I had to choose which part of my life I was supposed to write about.

Faith?

Family?

Motherhood?

Teaching?

PTO?

Planning?

Mary Kay?

Recipes?

Church lessons?

Grief?

Growth?

The problem was not that I had nothing to say.

The problem was that I could not figure out which part of my life was supposed to be the “real” focus.

But the more I looked at all those different pieces, the more I realized they may not be as separate as they look.

The same thread keeps showing up.

Faith.

Effort.

Grace.

Growth.

And learning to love people well.

So maybe I do not have to choose only one lane.

Maybe Effort & Grace is the place where those lanes meet.

This will probably not be perfectly organized at first. I may still move things around, rename categories, rewrite pages, and figure things out as I go.

That feels appropriate, actually.

Because the site is still in progress.

So am I.

But it is finally started.

And that feels like something worth celebrating.