Intention Trumps Execution: 12 Years of Writing on the Internet

As of this month, I have been writing on the Internet for 12 years. I started a rendition of this blog (RIP “Where My Heart Resides”) in April of 2009, and have been faithfully documenting the big and small moments of my life here ever since. 

In other words: my blog is now an acne-prone middle-schooler. What a trip. 

I get itchy about the style of this blog every few years. Usually one day that will bubble up and I’ll declare without warning to my husband that I am going to “just change a few things” before disappearing into the black hole of Squarespace for seven hours, only climbing out to beg him to work custom CSS magic on everything I messed up. 

This may or may not have happened a few weeks ago.

As part of my spontaneous website makeover (that is not finished), I ended up going back through my archives because nothing was categorized or tagged, and this new template won’t work unless the content is catalogued well.

Let me tell you: it took every ounce of willpower in my actual body to not delete 75% of the posts. This is nothing new, of course. Any writer will tell you it’s embarrassing to look back on their older work. Some might call it excruciating. The majority of older content on this blog rotates between two simple, unoriginal story lines: this is hard, and this is easy. 

Motherhood is hard, marriage is hard, whine whine whine. In the next post, let me tell you how I got my baby to sleep through the night at three months old and all my life hacks as a brilliant mom of one. I recently spent an entire afternoon skimming through posts I wrote when I was 25, 26, 27, cringing so hard my face hurt. 

I wanted to grab my younger self by the shoulders and yell, WRITE BETTER THAN THIS. BE better than this! 

Then I remembered ... we can only write from where we are. 

Well, that and where we’ve been. But we certainly can’t write from where we will be. My 25-year-old self cannot write from the perspective of my 35-year-old self. The new mom of one cannot write from the perspective of a seasoned mom of three. We simply do the best with what’s in front of us on any given day, our stories and thoughts and emotions unfolding in real time.

Do you know what’s wild? In those early days of blogging (back when people used to read blogs), on many of my older posts, there are tons of comments from women who, somehow—in spite of the poor writing and lack of substance—were truly encouraged by what I had written. What grace, what mercy. Frederick Buechner once said, “The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” 

You could not pay me to read through those old posts again. But my heart began to soften as I read through some of the comments. If we can only write from where we are, surely there are readers in that exact same place longing to be met where they are, too.

***

Last year, a local writer interviewed me for a short profile piece in my college’s alumni magazine. Toward the end of our extensive phone conversation, she asked, “What do you think of the term mommy blogger?”

I laughed out of instinct and rolled my eyes, although she couldn’t see my reaction through the phone. How could I possibly explain my nuanced feelings toward a term I avoid at all costs, yet also represents a genre that—for all intents and purposes—influenced the trajectory of my career?

Seven years ago, I didn’t like what I was reading about motherhood on the Internet, so I asked a small group of women to write about it differently with me. Seven years ago, I believed we would grow as women and mothers through the process of writing—of holding our own motherhood experiences under microscopes, diligently working to extract something worthwhile to share with others. 

I’ve grown through the process of writing for Coffee + Crumbs, absolutely. But there’s another piece of this puzzle worth mentioning. Reading about motherhood, in all its consuming and gritty glory, has proved to have an equal, if not greater impact on me.

The sheer act of consuming tales from my fellow comrades has expanded my view of motherhood 100 times over. Situations and ideals I once viewed in black and white are now every shade of ash, charcoal, slate and stone. My eyes have been opened to countless journeys different than mine—ones wrought with infertility and miscarriage, failed adoptions and debilitating anxiety. These raw, honest stories have grown my empathy, stretched my faith, and challenged my once-tightly-held parenting convictions over things that formerly mattered to me but no longer do.

Who would ever dare to call this powerful, glorious give-and-take art, “mommy blogging”?

Doesn’t the creative work of capturing the essence of our boundless, infinite, unfathomable love for these children qualify as something better? 

We are mothers and writers laying bare our lives, our hopes, our broken expectations and miracles for all the world to see. I don’t know what to call it, but I walk around this house every single day collecting the mundane scraps of my life, mining for gold, looking for treasure to offer back to the world. I don’t know how to live and mother any other way. It feels like a brilliant mystery, a force I can’t resist.

“Mommy blogging” doesn’t do it justice.

Make no mistake: Coffee + Crumbs would not exist without this blog. This is where I learned the power of sharing stories with other people, the warmth of community, the sacred practice of creating art and releasing it into the world. This is where I learned to write honestly, even when I didn’t write well.

Blogging has changed a lot over the past decade. Once upon a time, I could write a post about something dumb and garner 30 comments the day it went live. Blogging was its own world, its own community. We’re shifting into Instagram now, limited attention spans, tiktok videos and reels and clever graphics. It seems, if you want to stay relevant, you must go where the people are. Be where the action is. That, and start an email list.

I enjoy Instagram for what it is, but as I’ve been working on my social media boundaries and spending less time there lately, I’ve felt drawn back to this space, this blog, my little writing home, where I can write as freely as I wish without a character limit. Where I can play with my own creativity and see where it takes me. 

12 years later, I cannot help but reflect on the way I’ve grown up here, on this very blog. I became a mother here. I’ve gone through life transitions and moves and friendship breakups and career shifts, all while writing here. 

And I guess I just want to say thank you. Whether you’ve been reading this blog for 12 whole years, or 12 whole days, I hope you’ve felt loved in this space. I pray something I’ve written in that time has resonated with you, encouraged you, and pointed you to the greater story we’re all part of, the one of undeserved grace and abundant love. Thank you for making space for me and my words, even when they weren’t deep or significant or well-written. 

I’m reading Adorning the Dark for the second time, and in one of the early chapters Andrew Peterson writes, “Intention trumps execution.” He details one of his earliest rehearsals for Beholding the Lamb of God (now an acclaimed yearly concert), where, according to him, they “messed up plenty.” He writes, “We weren’t there yet, but we were on to something.” 

As embarrassed as I might feel about words I wrote 10, 11, 12 years ago, as my good friend Katie says, I wouldn’t be here without there. Every bad post, every poorly-written thought, set me on a path to where I am today. To the words I wrote yesterday. To the words I will write tomorrow. To the words that—Lord willing—10 years from now, will embarrass me as well. This is the gift of growth.  

I think most people probably assume Coffee + Crumbs is my favorite place to write. And I do love writing there, obviously. But Coffee + Crumbs feels more like a vacation home to me. It’s special, and beautiful. I wear better clothes there. The view is superior, by far.

But this blog? This space feels like my actual home. I know every nook and cranny here. I know the spots where the floor creaks and exactly what time of day the sun shines through each window. This is where I am the most comfortable, the most myself (braless, in stretchy pants). Anytime I have experienced writer’s block, or crippling insecurity, I have always found my way back to my own voice here, and only here.

If intention trumps execution, I hope you’ve seen my heart over the course of these 12 years. And that you know my intention in this space has always been to use my creative gifts to tell the story of my ordinary life as beautifully as possible. To encourage, to spread light and hope and love in this one tiny corner of the Internet I’ve been so blessed to steward.

I keep hearing blogs are dead, but I’m gonna keep mine alive until God tells me otherwise.

Cheers to 12 years, and to however many I have left.