for edie.

{from here}

This blog world is hard to explain to those who do not know it. It is difficult to describe people whose friendship is based not on face-to-face contact, but on the words we choose to express publicly about our homes, our families, and our lives. Blogging is proof, I think, that words matter. That they create intimacy and familiarity in ways that we cannot begin to fathom.

Unlike the characters of the books I cherish, the lives I inherit through blog reading are real. The people are flawed and full of hope, people with funny families and heartbreaking stories and day-to-day lives that look and sound a lot like mine. The blogs I read inspire me to create, to celebrate, to embrace the days I’ve been given. And I love their writers as if they were my dearest friends.

Edie is one of those.

And despite our differences in age, geography, and familial status, her blog has long touched my heart.

In his letter to Titus, the apostle Paul encourages friendships between older and younger, between those with much life experience and those with little. “Older women,” Paul writes, “can urge younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands.” In short, Paul says, they teach us what is good.

We live in a world segregated by age. Even in Christ’s body, the small groups and classes we attend are held with our peers, those in our own life stage. I understand this. I thrive and grow when I talk to friends who are where I am, who are struggling with jobs and marriage and school.

But I love sitting at the feet of those who are wiser.

Each week, I sit at the feet of a woman named Edie, a woman who I have never met, but whose words pierce my heart and bring joy to my soul.

Her stories of life as a wife and mother, a homeschooler and lover, a Christ-follower and a home-creator, remind me of what this life is really about. Her passion for her Lord and her husband and her children and her home and her books serves as proof that this world is so much more than meets the eye.

Edie shows me what is good.

Days after Christmas, I sat once again at Edie’s feet, horrified to hear about her devastating loss and touched by her unwavering faith in a God who knows.

It is the first time, I think, I have cried over someone I have never met.

This blog world is strange, I know. And as I spoke of Edie’s tragedy to friends and family, I realized that despite their compassion, they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand how I could be so upset for a family so far away when tragedy always looms much closer.

I have prayed for Edie, and prayer is powerful. But my human heart wants to do more. I want to send Edie books and pictures and chalkboards and Anthropologie cookie jars. I want to give Edie her home back.

All bloggers must wonder why it is we do what we do.

Why we spend hours choosing the right words and pictures to express how we feel to a world we cannot see.

Edie is proof that we write — we blog — for story’s sake.

I cannot give Edie back her home or her comfort or her stability. The pages of her blog, though, the stories she has written, the memories she has made, can.

Today, I don’t have much. But I’m giving back to Edie what she has given me: Words.

Because we know: Words are powerful, life-changing, and good.

And today? They are enough.