A year of Shades of Grace

It’s been a year since I wrote my first post and published it under Shades of Grace. Several days—or was it weeks?—before that day in 2005, I was mulling over the idea, debating with myself about this blog thing. Initially, I was content with just visiting the blogs of my more technologically-savvy officemates. Yet as I read their posts and enjoyed the slices of their lives, it has eventually lured me into thinking, “Maybe this is the right time.”

And so I took the plunge and tapped my first ever post. Here’s how "Bike, Swim, Blog" read:

I’ve never learned to bike and to swim for exactly the same reason: fear. Fear of not learning (yes, I can be irrational at times), fear of experiencing discomfort—scraping my knees and swallowing salt water, fear of disappointing whoever will be patient enough to teach me.

This same fear has almost kept me from setting up this blog. Friends have been prodding me to try my writing hand on this fairly new technological phenomenon. Most of the time I just smile and mutter, “I will,” not really saying when. My mind says, “You can do it. You love to write.” But my heart counters: “What if you make a major grammatical error? People would wonder how you could have kept your job all these years! What if your words and experiences are too boring? Not interesting enough? Or worse, what if nobody reads your blog at all?”

The paranoid in me shouts like Goliath taunts young David. Good thing I know my way around my Bible and read how David struck down the giant with one smooth stone from the stream. Maybe, just maybe, I could hush the paranoid in me with one heartfelt, sincere entry.

So here I am, tentative but thrilled, scared but sure. I may never learn how to pedal a bike or swim in the sea. I may never be able to skid through rough terrain or glide gracefully in the water. But I can try to warm your heart, make you smile, challenge your mind. Maybe I can make new friends or reconnect with old ones by bridging the chasm between my keyboard and your screen.

All I can offer are my words.
Come, be my guest.

Fast-forward to 2006, this space in cyber-universe now feels like home. Here I can immortalize feelings and events. When I look back at a particular time, I think about what I wrote in my blog. Just two days ago, while talking with friends about how I’ve been learning to forgive, I recalled a post about stone and sand. When I mentioned to somebody about my trip to Mindanao, I told her about a post entitled "Seven Days in Mindanao." Eighty-two entries can help me do that as these posts remind me of joys and pains, people and places, small delights and grand ideals.

Not having the patience to do a scrapbook, I’m delightfully surprised to realize I’ve maintained a scrapbook of sorts—a scrapbook decorated with words, each page arranged with the gentle tapping of the computer keys. Today, on my blog anniversary, I'm thanking the Creative God who enables me to interact on life with my words. Here's wishing that these words will continue to be true to what they wish to reflect: Shades of Grace, not mine, but His.