Dear Friend,

You think I’m writing about you? I am.

When I write my stories and my characters come living off of my pen – they come from you. Every person I’ve ever known well gets written into my stories. Most of the time you are not singled out as one character, but woven in as a composite of many characters, many traits, many looks.

You all provide my inspiration for my writing because through you I understand human nature. I understand what it’s like to love and be loved. I understand what it’s like to have someone make me feel angry or jealous or ridiculously happy or inspired. I understand what the meaning of silence is between two people, and I understand the meaning of a deep conversation.

Were it not for you, I’d never have been inspired to write stories. Your lives that have been woven into my own teach me about the beauty of stories and the need to keep telling them. The conversations that I have with people – the comments they make to me – the things I discover that I believe as I’m explaining them to someone – they all provide me with inspiration for my writing. The experiences that I tell of on my blog – those don’t just come from my imagination (sometimes they do). They come from real life – with you – my people, my friends, my family.

People who haven’t given up on me. People who have (although I assume they wouldn’t be reading my blog if they had). People who talk to me all the time. People I only talk with once in a while. People that know my soul inside and out. People who maybe only know about me because of online postings. People I see in passing. People I see daily.

These are the people who live and breathe in what I write because they have been written into my life story – and I am so thankful for all of them.

I need you, my friends. I need you to continue helping me see how beautiful life is despite all the ugly. I need you to pray for my soul, talk with me deep, and continue having the adventures that I so dearly love to have. I need you because God created us to live in a community of people – never alone. And it is when our stories collide and overlap that they start telling a more beautiful story. I just happen to write it down on paper and on the screen.

This is the story we need to tell so that we don’t forget this brief, beautiful time given to us here on earth. It might feel insignificant, but God is doing a thousand significant things through our stories that we might never know about. And His grand story is the most important one to be a part of.