One of my bests tells me the other day that she has to save up my posts for when she has time to think about what I'm saying. I consider her on the general side of high intelligence, so this concerns me a bit. It might seem like I use this blog as my platform, and perhaps that's what it is, but really, if you want to know the truth: I'm just working out the kinks in front of you. I never know what I'm going to write about before I write it, never come to full resolution before the last line of the post, and usually begin with just a verse or phrase that's floating around in my head.

So maybe, I think this morning, maybe my kinks are still too rough for public consumption.

I don't know.

My goal isn't to gain readership and build internet clout. Maybe this is my hangup, I care less about you than I want.

But I also care more about you than I want--I checked my blog stats the other day and found that I'd lost a few readers. "I wonder what I did wrong?" I asked myself.

Someone tells me last week that they want to learn how to be compassionate from me. Compassion comes easily to me, it seems, empathy is only a few words or tears away. You're my best friend if you need me in some fashion and I'm your best friend because I'll love you in any fashion. The truth is that my compassion is just cloaked fear though, if you must know. Inside of me, deep, deep inside of me there is a very present fear that if I do not reach out to you, you will not reach out to me. If I do not make sure you know that I love you, you will not remember to love me.

So this is comes through in my writing, my posting, this website, I suppose.

I've always thought that writing is empathy in motion for me. I'm telling you that I know how you feel because I know how I feel. But if you struggle to understand what I'm saying, how is that empathy? It's really just narcissism.

Which is what I'm finding is everywhere in my life. Last week's post about not thinking of myself as more highly than I ought just scratched the surface of what God is teaching me about pride. It's everywhere in me, peeking through the most tender of surfaces and rooted in the most stalwart. It is, shockingly, the cause of 98% of the sin in my life. It is the reason I still struggle to understand the gospel every single day and it is the buffer between any sort of pain and me. I bandy it like empathy or compassion or wisdom, but really, it's just my way of protecting me.

This blog is too.

To be honest.

I've thought about a hiatus, but I'm afraid I'd never write at all if I did that and writing does work out the kinks, so it's worth it for that. I guess instead a confession will have to do. I'm guilty of thinking about myself and of myself more than I ought. I want my life to be about Jesus and I want the overflow to be about you. So this is my apology and this is my ask for forgiveness: I want the love of Christ to compel me to love you in the best way I can.

I don't know how, but I want that. I do. Desperately.