I want to write.

Granted, I write all of the time. I write sermons for worship every other week. I wrote a dissertation for a Doctor of Ministry in 2020.

Funny story.

My advisor handed me my revisions about the same time the world went on lock down for the COVID-19 Pandemic. I can remember the day it all began because my daughter walked downstairs for breakfast before getting ready for school and I told her, “No school today. The school is closed for three weeks while this pandemic clears up.” She shrieked with joy and ran back to bed. For the next few weeks my wife and I managed, like parents around the world, to balance work and life and parenting and home schooling within the confines of our home while taking periodic trips out for the necessities like groceries feeling as if we were entering a war zone only to return home to sanitize shopping bags and food packages before carrying them into the house.

In the midst of all this I revised my dissertation to my advisor’s satisfaction and then at the end of April I defended my dissertation on a shaky Zoom call from my basement while my kids were having a free-for-all just above me. I remember walking upstairs announcing that I had passed and they said, “What’s for dinner?”

Writing is something I do often. But I have more to write than I can get out on a Sunday sermon (though many of those will be posted here). Maybe someday I’ll put it all together for a book but for now this is just an exercise in courage; me practicing the courage it takes to put my stories and thoughts out there.

I want to write.