thirty-one days of quiet

As you may or may not know, though I'm not quite sure how you wouldn't know, I was at the influence conference this past weekend. It was a weekend filled with fresh truth and hugged out selfies. It was just what my soul needed.

I thought I would come back from the conference, and maybe you did too, with vision, purpose, dreams, goals, and plans.

One truth that I heard consistently, at least I heard the idea of it, is that gospel and strategy can (and should) go hand in hand.

I've come home home with the word rest, to the sounds of peace, and to the very delicate touch of quiet.

What happens when strategy means quiet?

I thought long on the first flight, continued through my four hour layover, and then throughout my last flight home. I thought long on the word quiet.

Was God really going to call me to be quiet?

Would He actually call me, for a year, to go to a conference, and then send me home with the word quiet?

The answer is YES. It's a loud yes.

I heard God start calling me to quiet a while ago, so long ago that I can't remember when. I just never heard Him give me a date or time, so I was waiting on Him.

I knew quiet was inevitable.

October, outside of today, will be quiet here on nadinewouldsay.

It'll be quiet here on the blog, but my fingers, heart, and words will be scheming together.

I plan to write a lot, to dream a lot, and to just spend a lot of time planning instead of catching up.

One thing I was inspired to do at influence was to better pursue excellence.

Jeff Goins shared in his talk about how we often call people with very thought through blogs narcicistic. People who have good headers, fancy font, sponsored posts, and all sorts of other things - we call them arrogant.

He shared that simply writing words and expecting people to show up in a space where you are putting very little time and effort into - that's actual arrogance.

I've been a bit arrogant. While I do put a whole lot of time in this space, I often do it on the fly. I feel like I'm always just trying to keep up, and I'm rarely ahead of the game.

October is for me to be intentional, and to be better than I have been.

I've been wanting to better define a lot of the spaces on this blog, and to better utilize each dose of internet I've been given. Quiet here will help all of that happen.

One of the hardest aspects of getting quiet is saying a brief see ya later to my Psalm series. I could expand on the reasons why it's hard, but that seems a little bit too loud for a month of quiet. It'll be back in November.

Shauna Niequist shared that she doesn't want to stand before God someday and claim that something was too scary to do, that fear stopped her.

While quieting a blog might seem a bit dramatic for that statement, I get it. It's really scary for me to be quiet for a month, but it's also more important to me to serve God well.

I've heard the whisper of quiet, and while it terrifies me, it's not as terrifying to me as not listening to the voice of God when He tells me what to do.

His call to quiet is purposeful. I don't know its purpose but I do know that God is Lord of every second. So if He says quiet, I have no intention of being loud.

I'll be active on twitter to chat, instagram to hopefully inspire, and I'm always available by email nadine at nadinewouldsay dot com.

See ya in a month.

nadinewouldsay

Around my blog, things are simple. Things aren't complicated. I try to be as authentic as possible, stretching myself to be vulnerable, generous, wise, and funny.  

EVERYBODY at influence told me that I'm funny. Sometimes when I wasn't trying to be funny. I also got called a dork a lot. Welcome to Nadine.


I'm the girl who sits on her bed at night and asks God to explain what a gospel approach to having a crush on a boy looks like. If you don't believe me, you should have been a fly on my wall last Monday.

That's me.

I'm the girl who had a friend over a couple weeks ago for the first time in a while (the friend, not having somebody over - that's all the time) and she laughed at me because of how much of a verbal processor I am.

More or less she said this to me: So basically you've run this thing you're thinking through through like a thousand people. And we've all said the same thing.

My answer was akin to, not a thousand, just like six.

But that's me. Constantly running my ideas by a thousand or so people, just to be sure that I'm not an idiot. One thing I learned at influence is that maybe it's time to learn how to make some of my own decisions.


So when you pop by this space, expect that girl.

Don't show up expecting perfection or a thousand tips to better your life. I love writing and love sharing, and hope to inspire and encourage, but more so I hope to point out that it's a whole lot easier resting at the feet of Jesus than it is attempting to carry my own burdens.

My most important rule that I have for my blog is grace.

Grace to make mistakes, to miss days, grace to write about the good and bad. Grace to share pretty pictures and the pictures that are a bit messy.

Because that makes life a whole lot easier, and blogging a whole lot more fun.

Pop back tomorrow to hear a little bit about the influence conference, and to hear something that might surprise you. That is, unless I wimp out and change my mind.

If you want to take a look at my weekend in Indianapolis, pop over to my instagram to see approximately a zillion photos from the weekend.

{a walk through} psalm 78

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It's okay to be all over the place.

I wrote these words a season ago. Some days they're relevant to me and some days they are not. Maybe they'll be relevant to you today.

Sometimes you sit down at your computer, after a long day. It wasn't a bad day by any stretch of the matter, but it was a long one.

You determine in yourself to finally sit down to write the post that is on your heart.

You sit down. You log in. You start typing.

You're a paragraph in and you realize you haven't shared the story you meant to share.

You hit the delete button and start again.

You write some eloquent pretty words but yet again find yourself tapping the delete button numerous times.

This pattern continues, and your typing seems to match the emotions you've been experiencing in your non screen time life.

You find yourself sharing a happy tale, one where things are bright and cheery.
You find yourself sharing a dark tale, where the words are heavy and the tone is bleak.
You find yourself sharing a realistic tale, the kind where the optimist and pessimist reach a happy medium of a cup that is not full or empty, but is simply shifting.

You let yourself take a break from the stories and just lie on your back on your floor, letting tears flow.

You let yourself take a break from the stories and tell the kind of joke that leaves your own side in stitches.

You realize that all of the things aren't matching up.

But you hit the publish button anyway, because maybe somebody needs to know that it's okay to be kind of all over the place.

{a walk through} psalm 77

It's girl behind the blog day! I love this day. Mostly because I love talking, so videos are fun for me. awkward.

Anyway, this month we're linking up with Ashley and Megan to talk about comfort zones. So click on over to their blogs to link up, and be sure to let me know my most awkward moment in the video.

My the last time I stepped out of my comfort zone was on Sunday.  Just in case you were wondering.

 

Are you linking up as well? I hope so! This take was take one thousand. Well, not quite that high but pretty close. I had one other good take but it cut out midway. Awesome.

You should link up. It's a super fun way to get to know some more bloggers. I'm like 80% sure that I might have met Megan through this linkup.