Has It Been a Year?!

My old header comes down:

My new header goes up—to mark the beginning of another year: 

Today I complete 365 days of blogging with this 100th post. It’s been 12 months of adventure—laughter and anguish, triumphs and losses, anger and forgiveness. The year has been about discovery; and reflecting on it.

And stripping, my friend Aleks may add.

It didn’t start out that way. All I ever needed was a journal on which I could monitor my written works and write down nagging thoughts on my current work or initial thoughts for future ones.

I have a small, nondescript notebook which I carry around. But reading my jottings has become exhausting. I could hardly read my own squiggles—more due to impatience rather than failing eyesight or poor handwriting. On a small notebook, I see how often I changed my mind or altered my thoughts through confusing arrows, erasures, exes, and crosses.

But on a blog? Once you’re on-line, things happen. You travel to far away places in blogosphere and come back in seconds, at will—deleting, rewriting, revising, editing, adding, re-thinking, and all the many quirky little things you can do on the computer, in minutes.

What charms me most about blogging is that, unlike writing a book where I am totally immersed and consumed 24/7, writing a post allows me to come and go—with all the freedom to go from mundane to profound; to write one paragraph or ten, 50 words or 5,000, in between trips to the bathroom or the mall or to Adboard meetings or to my speaking engagements and book signing, or to the university where I teach.

I thank the two young men who pushed me into blogging, first son JC and third son JR, who, I doubt, have sustained the interest to read beyond my earliest post. Little do they know that their mother has taken off to many cyber trips and entertained thousands of friends on home base right under their noses.

My numbers are modest, but for someone who became a proud grandma while blogging, they are more like googols: close to 12,000 hits, more than a thousand profile views, and almost two thousand reviews, comments, and emails from guests representing 71 countries.

Each of those is a story of grace.

Let me quote one: “I feel privileged to have discovered your remarkable blog. I enjoyed your great writing, deep and fresh insights, your flower photos, and blogs about the Philippines. Great colors and fantastic design! What I can relate most to is your belief in God's amazing grace!”

Indeed, it’s been a year of God’s amazing grace. In thanksgiving, won’t you sing with me?

Amazing Grace
(by John Newton)

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.