I’ve been writing devotionals every day, or nearly every day, for almost ten years now, I believe. The writing began as a labor of love as I joyously shared what God’s been teaching me in my daily Bible reading. The first devotionals were short. I began writing them when I was limited to 420 characters on Facebook. Then Facebook allowed for expanded posts and I wrote longer thoughts. Then, I developed a pattern that was three or four paragraphs long and got a blog where I posted them. (My blog posts go back to 2012. Each day was fresh and exciting, and I looked forward to sharing what God taught me.

Recently, I realized that some of my focus had changed. Instead of sharing what God was teaching me, I was reading God’s word and looking for what I could write about to teach others. In short, rather than sharing how I was being fed by God’s word, I was starving myself spiritually so that I could find a way to feed others. Over the last six months, the whole process became dry for me. At the beginning of the year, I tried to make a change in format, thinking that would change my attitude and outlook towards the writing. While it began well, it fell into the same trap. No longer was it a labor of love, the devotionals had become my daily obligation, whether I liked them or not. Then, we had a major upheaval in our life circumstances that made scheduling my reading and writing difficult.

I began missing, I lied to myself that I’d make them up, and then realized that the way I did things doesn’t really work with makeup work. But I felt guilty about it. I hadn’t adjusted to my new plan like I thought I would and I was feeling guilty about that, also. As I’ve thought and prayed about the situation, I realized that I needed to get back to reading God’s word to hear from Him for me, and not to find something to write for others. So, I’ve decided to take a sabbatical from writing devotionals for April, May, and June. I decided that yesterday but waited a day before saying it lest people think it was an April Fool’s Day post. I’ll still be reading my Bible, but this time to let God speak to me. I’ll probably do some kind of post related to Christianity in the news, because there are many things we don’t see or hear about in the world today. I’m planning on beginning writing devotionals again in July, but that’s subject to change as God leads.

My plans are to a) keep reading my Bible daily, b) read devotionals by other authors, and I may post them on my page, c) work on editing the book about our battle with cancer, d) work on editing some short stories, and e) building my marketing platform for the books and short stories I have written. If you’ll really miss my devotionals, you can go to this date in 2017 (see the archives on the http://dailyenduringtruth.com website) and read the Scripture passage and the devotional for that day, or, even better for me, buy my devotional books from Amazon. I hope to get back to devotionals in July with a renewed purpose and a fresh sense of God’s desire for me.