I blogged. Past tense. It was an adventure I started shortly after a phone call from the doctor that changed my life. The words, “You have lupus,” had the potential to devastate me. At least, that’s what I gathered when I googled this strange disease I knew barely anything about. Over and over again, my heart broke as I read stories of lupus sufferers who used words like, “alone,” “despair,” and, “my life is over.” I didn’t feel any of this.

I felt God holding together my broken body and my anxious mind. With all the heavy emotions that flooded my heart, I felt a strong undercurrent of joy and peace. My life had become incredibly hard, but it continued to be good because God remained good. And I knew that what I was experiencing was different from the words that appeared on the screen when I googled lupus. I wanted people to know they could experience what I was experiencing, too. So I blogged.

But after a few years, I came to a place where I was done writing. I had said what I wanted to say, and now it was time for other things. So I walked away from my blog with no intention to blog again.

I had no idea that as I walked away from my blog, I was walking into something big. Not a great, exciting adventure, but the darkest, most painful season of my life. A season where I longed for the voice of God to speak joy and peace into my heart and soul, but instead all I heard from Him was silence. For so long, I was a broken and empty shell, overwhelmed by the silence of God. Then one day, the silence ended. And this is where my new writing adventure begins.