November 2025
September noted the year mark as a “blogger” for me. As I said in that first blog post, I never really expected to blog. Yet it’s been a good way for me to practice consistency and flex those creative muscles.
Right along the heels of my one-year anniversary of blogging is the one-year anniversary of my debut book The Working Homemaker, which came out in October of last year.
Milestones are so interesting. On the one hand, they prompt us to stop and take note of all that has happened since the occurrence, maybe to brag a bit on the success or progress that has taken place. On the other hand, they can set us up for disappointment if we have unmet aspirations of what should have occurred by said point.
As I reflect on The Working Homemaker being out in the world for a year, there are some sweet memories related to the “highs” like seeing my book on the shelf of local bookstores or being welcomed on a show as a podcast guest. There were also lows like realizing my publisher did not have the bandwidth to promote my work and accepting the reality that my little corner of the bookshelf and the internet isn’t going to cause big waves one way or the other.
Ultimately, I have been reminded that milestones include experiences and labors of love whose impact can’t always be easily measured. I want to pursue things I care about even if the payoff doesn’t come back in quantifiable ways.
I follow a woman on social media who recently posted how jaded she has become as a writer because she could never get her social media following high enough to get a contract with a big book publisher, so she now feels like all her writing and ambitions have come to a dead end.
I suppose I have been blessed to have never expected my writing to become my “day job” or a route to popularity. (Though I’ve certainly learned I have to let people know my words exist if my writing is to be more than purely an act of self-reflection.) My writing is something I do because I feel more fully myself when I live into the passions God has given me.
In the same way, we all have things that make us come alive.
For some, it may be coaching our kids’ sports team or painting. For others, it may be singing on the worship team, hosting a book club, or playing pickleball. Yet, despite the enjoyment it brings, we may have times where we question why are doing said thing. Maybe we are tempted to write off its importance if it doesn’t equate to a paycheck or if we only have so much time to devote, meaning we never graduate out of an amateur status.
After I released my book, I had to reflect on my relationship with writing. What was next? Should I write things that weren’t related to the book? Was it worth doing something as simple as a blog post if it wasn’t going to help steer me to a future project?
Around that same time, I team taught an elective college course called Created to Live Creatively. I taught it with an art professor, and each week we explored a new aspect of creativity. We read Emily P Freeman’s book A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live. My purpose as the course facilitator was to help students recognize and prioritize the ways that they are creative beings, image bearers of a creative maker. Yet, as often happens in teaching, I ended up gleaning just as much, if not more, than my students.
I was already familiar with Emily’s book. I had listened to the audiobook when I was just beginning to feel the stirrings of trying my hand at a book length project. But coming back to it afterward was impactful because it reminded me that we don’t have to have a contract or outward inspired deadline to give ourselves permission to create. If we pay careful attention, we are compelled because we have an innate desire to “be fruitful,” not just in bearing children but in cultivating and offering our gifts and talents to the world.
Emily writes,
God calls you his workmanship, his poiema. What happens when God writes poetry? We do. We happen. We are walking poetry, the kind that moves, the kind who has hands and feet, the kind with mind and will and emotion. We are what happens when God expresses himself. (25)
As the poetry of God, all our hands make a different kind of art and we create with our successes and our failures, our talents and our shortcomings, our instruments and our yard rakes, our numbers and our calloused hands. Nothing is off-limits. (211)
So, at this one-year milestone, rather than calculating book sales or page clicks, I am celebrating the blessing of creativity and learning how to lean into that. It can be tempting to feel the need to commodify everything. If one likes to knit, she should start an Etsy site, right? Maybe, but maybe not.
Perhaps just the experience of engaging our minds and our hands is the reward. Perhaps it’s already pleasing to the Lord even if others don’t take notice.
As romantic a notion as being the poetry of God sounds, I admit that as I discussed this idea with my college students, I viewed them as being much freer than I to actually live into this. After all, they don’t have family-sized laundry piles and a mortgage to contend with. Sometimes I find myself saying things like, “I’ll start playing the piano again when the kids are teenagers, and I have some ‘me time.’” And all the parents who have raised teenagers smile knowingly at my naivete that life gets simpler rather than more complicated as children age.
So, I’m doing my best to use my little minutes. Write a little here, practice Pilates a little there, not enough to get a six pack but enough to remember I enjoy getting on my mat and that doing so is an art form made flesh.
Motherhood is such an all-consuming thing it can be difficult to feel justified in taking what little unclaimed time and energy remains for creativity. But we should. Ashlee Gadd explores this in her book Create Anyway: The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margin of Motherhood.
I’m finding that reminding myself of my need to live out my God given poetry also helps me recognize and value it in my children. I have one who gets out her sewing box to tailor a t-shirt into a swim-suit cover or a Barbie outfit. I have another who wants to join me in the kitchen any chance she gets.
I have one who loves nothing more than to lose herself in imaginary play. And my son is just starting to figure out his own likes and strengths and how they differ from others.
So, whether you find yourself baking bread or stacking canned goods at the homeless shelter, whether your dream is to start your own business or raise chickens, let’s mark the moments in time where we gave ourselves permission to live into those ambitions or aspects of ourselves.
Thinking about it another way, marking milestones is an acknowledgement of gifts we have been given, and
as James 1:17a tells us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.”
Anniversaries are not just for large scale successes. They are milestones of little and big “yeses.” They remind us that something mattered enough to commit to it, even if intermittently or imperfectly.
Image Credits:
Knitting Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/sunlit-knitting-workshop_3122245_1619328″>Stockcake</a>
Baking Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/joyful-baking-time_302464_104003″>Stockcake</a>
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/seasonal-window-triptych_3102554_1525518″>Stockcake</a>