I’m not dead. I promise. Last week I kinda sorta felt like I may be dying but I’m definitely not dead this week. You couldn’t tell that by my lack of blogging though. It’s been 12 days since I’ve posted anything. For the first month and a half of the year I posted something almost every day.

Basically, what I’m saying is that I’ve been even worse than Chris Jessen at blogging for the last two weeks.

I have a fairly decent reason though.

Back on February 4th, a little over a month ago, I wrote this:

By nature, I’m a prideful and arrogant kid who is a little too smart for his own good. I figure that I know how to do most things a little better than the “average” person and think that because of that I can reach higher levels on my own. I think that I can do it all myself without the need to ask others for help or to rely on God to provide. Me is all I need.

That post was all about how I got a big head and started thinking I had “arrived” because I was getting more viewers on here. It started a process that forced me to look inside and ask myself why I was writing as much as I was. Up until that point I had written a new blog post every weekday of 2011 except for maybe one day. I was pumping stuff out at a rate that I’d never done it before.

But something didn’t feel right.

It felt off.

There were some nights that I simply didn’t enjoy writing.

What started happening was that I would start forcing blog posts. In the past, I’d only write when I had the inspiration or had something happen that I wanted to share with people. In early February I realized I was starting to grasp at things and pull them out of thin air.

Personally, I don’t think a lot of the stuff I was writing was very good.

That was only part of it though. I noticed that I was putting more of my focus at night on coming up with something to write about than I was on my Bible study or quiet time. My typical night ends around 10 or 10:30 and then I do my Bible study, read a little, and write. I had started taking the writing, the least important thing of those three, and making it the most important thing. I rushed through my Bible study, stopped reading (I’m not reading a book right now and I hate that), and started focusing mainly on my blog.

I started focusing on my desire to be good at something and to be known instead of focusing on what I needed to do to be healthy.

So I took a break.

I didn’t tell anyone I was taking a break. I tried to just “slow down” but it wasn’t enough. I needed more time “off” from focusing on me. Some people, when deciding to take a “break” from their blog, will write a post telling everyone they’d be gone for x amount of time or whatever. I didn’t do that because a) I feel that’s like bragging about fasting, and b) I didn’t know how long the “x” would be for. Instead of promising I’d be back on a certain date, I just left it at what it was and didn’t say anything.

I’m back now though. I’m not January 2011 posting every day back, but I’m back. Originally my goal for the year was to post something on Tuesdays and Friday. I don’t even know that I’ll be doing that. I think I’m going to try to keep up the weekly FUEL Recap on Thursday because those are fun and other ministry friends have commented to me that they like seeing what we’re doing. I’m also going to write about the same things I’ve always written about, but hopefully only when they’re worth writing about and not when I’m forcing it.

Getting your priorities out of whack is a really easy thing to do. I think I’d be remiss in writing this entire thing and not suggesting that you take a step back to examine where your priorities are right this minute. Is God still first? Have you gotten too busy with this thing or that thing that he’s moved from #1 to #1b, #2, or #16? What’s it going to take for him to be your #1 again?

I can’t answer those questions for you. All I can do is hope that you learn from me and don’t make the same mistakes.

Let me be the guy that messes up so that you don’t have to.