Blogging with beauty when you're loud and tactless

Captain’s Log, Stardate 07.25.2006

I'm gone to RWA National conference: This might be my last post for the rest of the week, depending on if I can get internet access at my hotel.

Blog book giveaway:
My Thursday book giveaway is WEB OF LIES by Brandilyn Collins.
My Monday book giveaway is BE MY NEAT-HEART by Judy Baer.
You can still enter both giveaways. Just post a comment on each of those blog posts. I won’t be drawing a winner this Thursday, but on Monday, July 31st, I'll draw the winner for BE MY NEAT-HEART and post the title for another book I'm giving away.

Blame Mary: My beautiful friend Mary DeMuth is hosting a “Carnival of Beauty” on Wednesday. I’m not really sure what that means, but she asked me to join so I said “Cool!”

The theme is “The Beauty of Blogging.” Now blogging I could talk about all day! Blogging is beautiful for people like me who can’t shut up.

Maybe it’s ego-centric. I mean, blogging is uncensored, unedited writing/ranting/complaining/crowing/cheering/jeering/crying. It is self-publishing in all its glory and/or shame.

But I also firmly believe that a good blog has a theme. And while there are many themes which overlap, each blogger is unique in how he/she treats that theme.

For example, say my blog theme is chocolate. I will expound on calorie count, complain about the texture of chocolate chip ice cream, and support the truly dark stuff because it’s somewhat healthy for you (seriously!). Diann Hunt will say it’s the new food group.

Isn’t that our individual beauty as bloggers? We take our blogs and write our different outlooks on life and our faith. We are all members of Christ’s body.

I am quite happy being, say, a mole on Jesus’ chin. Or maybe His fourth toe (No one ever talks about the toes in-between the big one and the little one).

Yes, if you haven’t guessed by now, I am loud, Asian, and not very reverent. But there is beauty in me and in my blog posts somewhere. (Sort of. Maybe.)

(Can you tell I have an obsession with parentheses?)

Some bloggers (many of them my friends—go figure!) have truly beautiful blog posts. Rich and spiritual, raw and transparent.

I am rather prickly, sometimes stupid, and usually ready to laugh at myself when I’m not wondering what the heck happened.

Is it too arrogant to think that there is the beauty of Christ in my blog posts? He gave me my rather tactless personality, and He often gives me the words to write (so I can blame Him, right? Right?). He also often gives me the words to pray (which I do every Sunday here on my blog, if you’d like prayer).

So, I guess I have to have a point for this blog post.

You are beautiful because you’re you. I am beautiful because I’m me. Our blogs are beautiful because we are Christ’s children.

And if your blogs are thought-provoking and point others to Christ, while mine usually elicit a “Huh?” or a snort/guffaw, well . . .

Jesus laughs, right?