I started blogging long before blogging was cool. It was really just for myself. As someone who was trained to write for a newspaper audience, it was strange to write for an undefined audience. Blogging has been therapeutic for me, especially as our family has expanded to include two kids who keep me on my toes, act as mirrors to myself, change my perspective on the world, and provide me with the hardest yet most rewarding moments in my 33 years.
Plus, you know, I just don't want to forget things. My kids are funny. Being a mom has changed me. We've been amazing places. My husband and I are living a life that is nothing like I planned but everything I didn't know I wanted. And those are the kinds of things worth remembering.
Yet, like all things in life, some things about blogging aren't all about me.
Like my support for Compassion International, which I mostly learned about from other blogs. In the past few years, we've started sponsoring two kids -- Roselyn is 5 like my daughter and 10-year-old Jean shares a birthday with my 2-year-old son -- and serve as a correspondence sponsor for another boy, 13-year-old Elvis. Both boys live in Ecuador and Roselyn, who was our first sponsored child, is in Guatemala.
As a mom, my heart has been softened to kids who are like my kids with the pictures they like to draw, games and sports they like to play, and truths they are learning from parents and mentors. To think about them not having clean water, reliable houses, access to Bible lessons, stable families, and sufficient medical care makes me want to do something. I live in Murray, Ky., far away from Ecuador and Guatemala. But when their letters arrive and they tell me little details of their lives there, the world becomes smaller and I'm left feeling blessed even though I set out to help them.
So while sponsoring kids, I also decided to sign up to a Compassion blogger. Sometimes there are writing prompts. Other times there are my own personal lessons learned. And sometimes there's a message of compassion that lingers and gradually changes perspective. {You can read my Compassion-related posts here.}
There are plenty of other kids who need support, even from small towns far away from theirs. And I've learned that helping them helps my kids too. My daughter talks about Roselyn like we've spent time with her. She'd send her toys if she could. She draws her pictures. I write her notes.
And, really, $38 isn't that big of a deal when it helps and heals both here and there. You can sponsor a child too. And you can read what other Compassion bloggers have experienced. Trust me when I say, if you start following a blogger who goes on a Compassion-sponsored trip to meet sponsored kids your heart won't remain the same.
These bloggers have served this ministry with their words and time and money. Take a look around the improved Compassion Bloggers website. You can look back at past trips and follow future ones. You can help spread Compassion. You can browse the list of who blogs for Compassion.
And you can trust that words have power and are helping bring God's Kingdom to families across the world that are linked with compassion that transcends cultures and distances.
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