Tuesday, January 27, 2009

WOW! Thanks! Thank you Jesus!

I'd like to get something up tonight. I've been working on a substantial post, but it isn't coming together - needs more prayer as much as anything. I didn't put enough time into prayer today. The kind of posts I want to write must come from a place firmly rooted in prayer and focused on Jesus Christ through our Blessed Mother. I'm just not there today.

I am a little overwhelmed by the success of the first segment of my conversion story. I Tweeted about it on Twitter at about 2:00 AM. I thought maybe 5 or 10 of my followers on Twitter might take the time to read it. I don't have access to stats on this blog (yet), but I'm comfortable in assuming it was at least an order of magnitude greater than 10. Thanks especially to Jeff Miller for featuring it on the Curt Jester. Thanks also to Toby Danna for giving me a Premio Dardos award. Thanks to the people who have followed and commented.

I also want to mention my very good friend Jason, who unknowingly followed the link from The Curt Jester and recognized my story! For now, I'll stay with not revealing my last name or exact location, but please know that its not because I'm not being honest!

I've been fantasizing about starting a variety of Blogs for at least 5 years. I tend to be obsessive compulsive, and a perfectionist, and grandiose so it has never happened because I want to design my own site, host it, make it great and I plan to do it all by myself. That's two more defects of character - self sufficiency and difficulty appraising how much work is involved.

Two weeks or so ago, my friend George who was raised Episcopalian, turned nondenominational Evangelical and now is praying the Rosary and Chaplet of Divine Mercy and exploring Catholicism got me talking about Bl. Charles de Foucauld on a phone call. I wanted to give him some information, and on a whim decided to make a blog, and write a post, just to accomplish that (obsessive compulsive). I didn't bother to make it too pretty and mainly copied and pasted from a couple of sources.

Now I had a Blog! A few days later, I had something on my mind and wrote a post about it and Tweeted it. Last Thursday night I read Adoro's post on her first debate defending the pro-life position and was inspired to finally start writing my conversion story. I'd been thinking about it for a week, since reading an installment of Proud Catholic Daughter's conversion story.

I have some ideas for further posts. As I said I'm working on one dealing with conversion in the sense of spiritual healing and spiritual growth. A particular focus will be on how each person's journey is going to be different, and that we need to be cautious in expecting sudden and dramatic spiritual experiences for ourselves, or if we have experienced one ourselves, expecting other to have one too.

One of the dreams I have for this Blog is to develop a place where there is dialogue. My model for this is a Blog called the Internetmonk, by an Evangelical SBC minister, whose wife is converting to Catholicism. I made my first ever comments on a Blog trying to answer IMonks questions and debating with a variety of non-Catholic viewpoints. There have been a very lively series of discussions, and it is not uncommon to get 100 comments on a topic.

Thanks again, and God Bless. Pray for me that I follow God's will in this and all my endeavors. One of the hardest things about trying to follow God's will, is accepting God's purpose in a particular event might be very different from what I want to think. That will be tomorrow's post!!!

I'll be praying for all who have visited this Blog.

Peace

4 comments:

  1. Hello Paul,

    Just wanted to encourage you in this blog & your reflections here. Its great to see a(nother!) Pacific North-westerner online & blogging.

    God bless you.
    - Deacon Jacob Maurer

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  2. Paul,
    As someone who is also new to the blog world. I understand how you can feel overwhelmed- so much to write, what to write, WHEN to write. I loved the first installment of your conversion story. I've been just following you on your blog- don't quite get Twitter yet. I love conversion stories-they help us to see we are not alone on this walk. I've been thinking about posting my own at some point as well. Prodigal Daughter got me thinking about that too. Thank you for all you have shared thus far. Blogging definitely takes some fortitude.
    God Bless!

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  3. Thank you Deacon Mauer. The Northwest is mission territory.

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  4. Karinann, thanks for reading and for commenting and encouraging.

    Twitter took me a while also. I looked at least 6 times, and couldn't see the point. Then I finally signed in.

    It starts to make since once you start following some people. One way to find people is to find one person you like or know, and then follow the people they are following.

    I need to go now, but later I'll post a few key names I follow.

    Paul

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