And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again.

And in between the amazing and the awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine.

Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary.

That’s just living heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life.

And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.

L. R. Knost

I discovered this quote recently at a store in Rockford, Illinois while visiting my family. I love meaningful quotes about life, but this is probably my favorite for its truth. These words serve as a perfect reminder for what life is and what it is not. It is not perfect. It is messy and it is gray. And gray is beautiful.

If you know me personally you know I am always thinking. I am always searching for my truth, searching for the answers, making sense of my life and the world around me. For the last few years, I have wanted to write a book. I have wanted to put onto paper all the things in my head, all the things I have learned. But instead I struggle to even journal consistently. I started writing a few pages a couple years ago and then I stopped. This is the pattern. I start and stop. And start and stop again. Why?

As much as I love the beauty of the written word, I think I fear it as well. Words seem both meaningful and meaningless. More so than ever there is a permanency to them. We cannot even google search something without it being linked to us. The words we type get saved and are used to understand each other, to figure out what we are in the market for. Does everyone now know I’m in search of a new eye cream? Instagram knows. Instagram always knows.  

On a more personal level, we hold on to the things people say. They affect us. They become part of our story. They can even be misconstrued to be our whole story. I’m sure we all have countless examples of when something we said was taken out of context. “That is not what I meant!” “It came out wrong!” Or examples of when something someone said hurt us. This scares me. This undeniable meaning, this permanency that words have holds me back. Once I link the words and my name, that is it. I can’t take it back. What if my words become a label? What if they push you, my reader, away? Or even worse, what if they push away those I hold so close?

On the other hand, would they even mean anything? Would they be met with indifference? More so now than ever, we are drowning in words. It seems everyone has something to say…about everything. The meaning behind our words is getting lost in the volume of them. I can only read so many comment threads in a day before going mind numb. And what are words without action anyway? Sometimes words are just that. You say something kind and then your behavior is opposite. You say you will do something and you don’t. This scares me too – that I could pour my heart and soul into my words and they could mean nothing to you.

So again I stop.

But there is a difference between what scares us and our truth. I refuse to let my fears be my story.

And so I write.  

This blog is about me and maybe you and what is great and what is not. It is about the gray. The nuance that is all around us but is so hard to accept. It won’t be perfect and may not always flow, but that is life.

The first thing I’d like to tell you is my name – Sarah Newman. I had butterflies in my stomach just typing that, but I did it.

Until next time.

Cue ‘These Words’ by Natasha Bedingfield