Ten year anniversary post

I've been blogging now for ten years and one day! Well, I didn't really get to this yesterday! I was probably subconsciously waiting for more people to respond to my plea for input, but it didn't happen. Nevertheless, I press on. 

Here's what a couple of people sent:

Reader 1
"Congratulations on your faithful blogging for 10 years.

I cannot pick one blog out that’s completely memorable  (not a reflection on your writing – more my memory) but I recall being challenged after reading your blog to by what you write:

             a) to pray for you and your family more regularly

             b) be more intentional in my dealings with those around me – in my conversations and my actions.

I've also been encouraged when I read your answers to prayer – (like being able to go back to Japan after this  Home assignment) – God is faithful, He answers prayers in His own way – whether it’s a ‘Yes’, a ‘No’ or a ‘Not yet’

Thank you for your blogs and for keeping ministry real in the humdrum of life. Here’s to the next 10 years!

Reader 2

It has been wonderful following your journey! 

God’s great faithfulness is what shines through all the cultural and distance from home issues that affect you!

So...as I'm not satisfied to celebrate this milestone with just two responses, I guess you get my thoughts after all.

Looking back on ten years

I look back at when I started this blog and I was in a very different spot. I had three boys under 10, and only one at school. I had very little going on outside the home. We were heading back to Australia on home assignment that year and I was quite stressed about it. Our middle son was about to graduate from Japanese kindergarten and I was about to embark on three months of full-time home-schooling our him to prepare him to start in the middle of grade one in Australia.

Since I started this blog we've made six international moves (= three home assignments), had three sons graduate from elementary school, two from middle school, and one from high school. One has moved out of home and started university in Australia. 

I've moved from being a stay at home mum with almost no ministry outside our home, to holding down two demanding part-time jobs. I've moved from being a fledgling writer to one who has been editing a magazine with an audience of over 1,000 for 8 1/2 years now.

Two years and nine days after I started this blog, Japan experienced one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. We were in Tokyo at the time and experienced one of the craziest times of our lives. Blogging at that time was both a great release and a help to others as they sought news about our safety and wellbeing.

We've said hellos and goodbye to dozens of friends in these last ten years. Some of our colleagues and one of our family members have passed away.

What hasn't changed

One of the reasons I started this blog was that I had a desire to write about life here, but didn't have a venue or an audience. I really wanted to tell others what it was like to live our ordinary lives in a rather non-ordinary job. I gave the blog the title—on the edge of ordinary— because it seemed to encapsulate the life we were called to. That's still true. 

Life has changed, yet remained remarkably the same for us.

We're still serving the Lord in Japan with OMF. We're still living in Tokyo. My husband is still serving at CAJ on the teaching/admin staff and feeling as though that is what the Lord's called him to long-term. My roles have changed more remarkably: from a full-time mum of little ones to a mum who juggles a lot more, including the tricky role of mum-of-teens. But I'm still committed to serving the missionary community here, I've just been given more freedom to do so as my boys have become more independent.

What have I learned by blogging for ten years?
I've learnt how to write quickly. I've learnt a lot about editing quickly too, to get my words into decent shape in a reasonable amount of time. For the first eight or so years of this blog I was writing here almost every day. To do that, and still do everything else in my life, I had to write and edit fast. Much of my writing and idea formation happens in my head before I even sit down. I usually sit down to write a blog post with a formative idea or topic in my head, something that I've found as I've gone about whatever that day has held.

My blog-writing pace has slowed since mid-2017 when I took on greater responsibilities with OMF Japan for their website content, especially in the form of editing a weekly blog post written by OMF Japan missionaries.

I've met new friends and been able to network with people through my blog. Though I often don't know who reads this as usually people don't comment, periodically I've met people through this. I know that people have been helped by it because they've told me.

I have done a lot of processing of my own life here. It helps me to be able to write things down, to think an issue through to a point that I'm able to put it into words. By doing so, I've often found that other people have appreciated my thoughts on whatever it was that the Lord had been putting on my heart.

I have a lot more words in my head that I can possibly load upon my family or friends. Here has been a safe place to put them. 

I also continue to learn the subtle art of writing in such a way that I'm not violating other people's privacy: my own family's or other people who I encounter in my life. I'm happy to say that I don't think those around me are worried that their private thoughts will end up here on my blog.

At this point I think I've run out of things to say, which is always a good point to finish a blog post. I have no plans to stop blogging. I'm not sure if I'll last another ten years. Only God knows what we'll be doing in ten years and where we'll be. But if my writing here continues to help me and to help others—and it fits into whatever else I'm called to do in the future, then it's a pretty good bet that I'll be continuing for a while yet.