Learning to Call Beautiful Things Beautiful

What can I say? Here I am, five years after starting this blog, saying goodbye. It's sad in a way, and yet it's for the best. There have been a lot of goodbyes in my life lately, and so it seems only fitting to close this chapter too. In a way, it's just mirroring the rest of my life. This blog belongs with a chapter of my life that I had to close. And so, close it, I will. Because I know it's the only way that I'll fully be able to move on to the next. Because it's not just an end. It's a beginning. 

When I started this blog, I was still reeling from the idea that I had idols in my life - things that I loved more than God. I didn't want to love anything more than God. And so from the time that I learned that idolatry is like spiritual adultery that breaks God's heart, I knew I needed to focus on changing my life externally and internally. I loved God and didn't want to break His heart. 

So I learned from a community of Christians that fed me a steady diet of the Bible - constantly talking about our sin and the salvation we have in Jesus. This tasted good at first. It seemed like Christianity at its best. But talking so much about sin had its drawbacks. It ended up labeling things that weren't sinful as though they were. It called beautiful things ugly. And when you call beautiful things ugly, you are lying. No one's life can go well when it is based upon lies. Mine didn't.

I stopped laughing. I had a hard time getting out of bed. I began to feel anxious constantly - always worried that I was going to mess up or get in trouble. I talked myself into believing that I didn't want to get married, because I thought it was the godly thing to do. I gave up my pursuit of music, because I thought it was just too worldly. I fought to keep my emotions in check, but it turned me into a shell of a person. I killed my desires in the name of fighting sin, but really I was just making myself less human. A constant diet of using the Bible to call beautiful things ugly turned out to be a bitter fruit that left me wanting nothing but death. 

And so that's why I must close this chapter. Because calling beautiful things ugly is the farthest thing from godliness. And because I don't want to use my platform to tell lies. I want to call beautiful things beautiful. And that's what Taylor Swift's Red album is - the inspiration for this blog - an exquisite masterpiece in experiencing life and love. And along with love, inevitably comes heartbreak. When we open ourselves up to the highs and lows of life, we experience the brightest reds and the deepest blues. That's what it means to be human. Any less than that is less than what God created us for. 

So from now on, you can find me sharing from the heart about what it means to be human over at iwilltravelon.com. I will undoubtedly still share about my favorite songs, but I will also share my own as well. In fact, the blog is named after a lyric in one of my own songs. You can read about how that song writing process inspired my new blog as well as listen to the song here. My hope is that this new blog adventure would create a community where, together, we can share our joys and sorrows as we seek to persevere through this beautiful and devastating thing we call life. 

I hope you'll join me. It won't be the same without you. The special type of beauty that you share with the world is one of a kind. I can't wait to keep seeing it shine.