Changing the GPS of My Life Coordinates (One Post at a Time)

When I created this blog two months ago, I did so with the intention to touch other people's lives with a catalog of my own struggles and breakthroughs as a Christian. I thought that by sharing my faith, I might reaffirm others' by extension. It never occurred to me that the greatest impact might be on my own relationship with God.

That's not to say that I wasn't aware it might be a potential positive side effect of my blog. Anything done in the name of the Lord can be seen as an opportunity for spiritual growth, and this was part of the reason I wanted to start a blog about my faith rather than another one about food or about my dating failures with the boy who didn't offer me a ride home or the boy who took the leftovers (don't ask).

Yet today, as I sat in my usual pew at Bel Air Presbyterian Church listening to Pastor Mark Brewer preach about becoming what we worship, it occurred to me that my blog is already starting to impact the way I live. It is, to quote Brewer, "changing the GPS of my life coordinates."

Because I am now writing about my relationship with God, I have begun paying closer attention to His voice in my everyday life -- and more importantly, listening to it. I let the rusty Honda Civic get over on the 405 fwy, I pause to smile at a stranger (and not just the cute male ones with dreamy eyes), and today, I got together with an old friend who I let drop from my life when it started becoming "too hard" to spend time with her. Seeing her wasn't easy, but I knew in my heart that it was what God wanted me to do. He wanted me to show her the love that He gives all His imperfect children -- even the really bratty ones who decorate their grandmother's white walls with Crayola art (oops).

But beyond the exponential growth of my WWJD-inspired behavior, the process of thinking and writing about God's presence in my life has also strengthened my belief that He actually is there. In his sermon this morning, Pastor Brewer reflected that expressing something intensifies the feeling -- like when a boy tells a girl he loves her or vice versa. I know I certainly feel angrier when I vent to my mother about the jerk who took my primo parking spot in front of my apartment -- much angrier than if I merely kept the LA atrocity to myself.

Similarly, by putting voice to the jumble of faith-related thoughts in my head, I am transforming them from miscellaneous musings into coherent ideas/beliefs. That was God telling me to offer an encouraging word to a friend going through a difficult time at work. That was God telling me to be grateful for my stable job. And that was God telling me that as much as I love writing about the risotto I made for dinner last night on my food-related blog, it is the "breadcrumbs" I leave here that are the ones that really matter.