Birds' Nests in the Woods

Perhaps it was from thinking about him after his death, discovering how much I remembered and how little I knew, that I learned that all human stories in this world contain many lost or unwritten or unreadable or unwritable pages and that the truth about us, though it may exist, though it must lie all around us everyday, is mostly hidden from us, like birds’ nests in the woods.

–Wendell Berry, A World Lost, p. 62.

I borrow this quote this morning from Anna's blog because it perfectly describes something about which I've been musing over the last week or so about the blogs I read and the very small slices of life we share.

I think that blogging draws our interactions with people in real life into sharper focus. We "meet" bloggers one post at a time. Each reader draws something of interest to his own perspective and forms a connection (or doesn't, as the case may be) to the person they think is behind the post. We discover a blog somewhere in the middle and often don't bother reading the archives, content to assume that we have a complete picture - based on the most current post.

I'm not a private person (God has His reasons for this, I am sure), but I do exercise a lot of caution when it comes to what I post. I try not to reference other people in my life (other than Pete and Piper, who make up a large, wonderful part of it!). I try to avoid wallowing while sharing my heart from the place that I am. I try not to link or post anything that I wouldn't want my younger siblings to see.

I know objectively that when people visit my blog, they see only what is there at the moment they visit. On Sunday, I changed my header. On Monday and Tuesday I changed it again to adjust font sizes. Over the course of the day on Tuesday, I actually added new background to my sidebar headers, two poems and two new pictures to my sidebars, and three different profile pictures. Yesterday, I fixed my header again. Who knew? (I'm happy with it all now, btw.)

Blogging gives us a unique ability to understand the concept of being where we are. Today I am not writing about what we did tomorrow. Today, I am not who I will be.

I have had a number of delightful notes lately from people who read my blog and have discovered more of me through the photos and writing that I share here. I love this. My world has expanded. In sharing my heart, I have gained opportunities to glimpse the hearts of those readers who share today with me.

I see more every day that the love we offer one another is very finite. It is too often based in who we are and what we see and understand today. We don't see what has been or what will be, or even what is most days. We don't have the complete picture God has. But every time we interact with another - whether we're writing a blog post, reading a book, or meeting in person - we have a chance to see through His eyes, to gain perspective, to ask Him what He sees in us and trust Him with everything we are.

I love reading and writing about life, sharing beauty and photos and random. I love meeting people and reading what they have to say about who they are. I love that I don't have to know it all to look through the lens of God's love and let others be who they are.

I don't know all the stories around me. What a wonderful thought. I don't see everything He is doing. There is beauty I haven't yet found. That's something of a reason to keep looking, now isn't it?