hub

I was at a surprise 50th birthday party tonight for one of my most favorite people in the world - Mike DeLong. Mike DeLong - lovingly still referred to as "P.Mike" used to be the senior pastor of my old church, and tonight we celebrated his 50th. I got to spend the evening with people I consider family. It was a great evening of conversation, and I realized just how much I enjoy dialogue with different people. I talked with one woman about my possibily going back to school for elementary education and about her job as a reading specialist (which is what I want to be). I talked with another woman about adoption (she and her husband are trying to adopt from China) and about my desire to one day adopt. I had conversations with different men about their places of employment (hey, a girl's gotta network when she's unemployed!) and I even had a conversation with my friend's dad about inappropriate hand gestures while driving (random, I know). But there was one conversation I found really interesting...

There were about 4 or 5 of us that got talking about blogs... Since our church split up, we've all sort of gone our seperate ways. Most of us see each other on occasion, but not nearly as often as we used to. Our blogs (well, at least the youngins who have them) function like the "news" - reporting what's going on in our lives. The thing that I found interesting, is one of my friends referred to my blog as the "hub." If you'll notice on my sidebar, under "meet and greet" I have an ever-growing list of other blogs that I read. She called it the "hub" because it includes almost all the blogs she reads on a regular basis, so she can just zip through the list and access them all via my sidebar. Some of the listed sites are family members, some of them are close friends, and some of them are friends I've never even met in real life. A few of them I met through Relevant Magazine that even though I have never met them face to face, I read their blogs and have even had extremely encouraging conversations with some of them! (Speaking of which, congratulations to Dave & Verity Sandell, and Justin & Kerry Wise who got married this month!)

But as I began to think about it a bit more, I realized how cool it is that I am able to access a wide variety of blogs... Each person has a different background, a different life story, differen passions, different talents, different everything - and I have access to some of their thoughts, some of their dreams, some of their silliness, and some of their passions. I feel so honored to have a list of people who let me in on a little bit of their life, and in turn, take the time to read some of my random thoughts as well. People from Wisconsin, from Canada, from Michigan, from Illinois, from Iowa, Indiana, Texas, Texas/Virginia/Ohio (hahaha - Jeffrey!), Minnesota, Washington, (I gotta work on finding some international blog friends!)... I have loved reading and dialoguing with each and every one of them... I have learned and been challenged so much!

As dorky as I sometimes think having a blog is, it's really a unique form of community. Not only do I get to keep up with people who I don't get to see as regularly anymore, but I also get to learn from some really cool people I don't even know in person. So to all of you who have a blog, or sometimes frequent this blog: thanks for sharing with me as we journey together.