I’m healthier when I write. Not because I have so many complicated emotions or experiences I feel like I need to sort through, but because if I go too long without writing–real and true and from my soul–it’s easy to feel like I’m slipping away.

Sometimes I don’t write because I feel like I don’t have anything to say. Or because I feel like I don’t have anything new to say. Some days I just don’t carve out the time or my head is spinning and not focused. Other times I’m plagued by this notion that I ought to be doing something exciting or remarkable or famous and that, if I’m not, there’s little point to my sharing. But that’s not me talking, that’s that’s the world. And I think we do ourselves and our society a great disservice by reveling only in the seemingly extraordinary.

Truth be told, I have little interest in what movie stars do in their free time. I’m far more interested and inspired to know what other regular people are doing in their regular busy and boring lives to try and reach out and reach in and be good and grow better. There’s something in connectedness–that moment when we can say me too–that ignites in us a sense of listening and true awareness that we rarely find anywhere else. It’s why young moms spend so much time talking about potty training and baby gear and how to make it through the muddle. It’s why as a young single adult I spent so much time talking to my friends about relationships. It’s why we step outside the door.

I confessed in my own private notes the other day that I couldn’t help feeling like I’ve been wandering this past year or so and how I craved some focus. Not necessarily a project, just focus. And if I’m being honest I think I know that the real focus of my life is already there–it’s staying true to the faith and doing my best to raise my children in love and righteousness. It’s simple and sometimes doesn’t sound very exciting, but when I’m giving it my all, that’s exactly how much it requires of me. My all.

And yet, there is a part of me that has always whispered that I have personal work to do too. Personal things to work on. And work that I need to do as an individual, not just as a mother or wife. It’s sobering, for sure, to recognize just how much trust the Lord puts in us as wives and mothers, but I also don’t think that’s the only assignment He trusts us with. And even though I know to my core that my primary focus is my family, I also know that I wouldn’t be who my Heavenly Father intends me to be unless I also sought out those other good things that might lift up both myself and others.

So perhaps it’s a little bit of all of those things that have led me back to writing lately. Not to be known, but to express in some small way to my fellow men that small thoughts are worth having and sharing, that little bits add up to real good, that we can be and feel and look entirely imperfect and still have a positive and personal impact on the lives of others. And it’s not so much that I’m here to change anyone as it is to offer up the light of the me too to those who may be feeling isolated as they sit and nurse babies or get stuck inside alone during nap time or wish that they could be doing more exciting things and instead are doing exactly what they know they ought to be, unglamorous though it may be. All I want to do is say out loud those things we share inherently. Not for any grand purpose except that I think there’s value in both saying and hearing the simple things.