I’m Still Alive

Yes, I’m still alive.

I’ve been busy trying to provide for my family, so writing took a backseat.

And no, you haven’t missed posts from me because you haven’t yet signed up for the paid subscription (my last post was July 30, 2024).

I just legitimately haven’t had the time to write. And if I can be brutally honest, I also haven’t really had the motivation to write.

Writers are historically known for being poor. Poverty doesn’t work in 2024 America. I have a wife and two kids I’m trying to provide a life for (and more importantly: have a life with). How can I pursue a pastime that will both take me away from my family and almost guarantee continued little income?

“But didn’t you go to college and grad school for ministry?”

Yes. And I realize that’s an even more poverty-inducing career than writing. And I often wonder if all of the closed doors in that pursuit are a sign that I’m called elsewhere. The problem is–after dedicating fourteen years to nonstop pursuit of ministry–my brain struggles to process the idea of an alternative career path. It also feels like a lack of faith to do so.

So I’m struggling–and I covet your prayers (whether you know me personally or not).

But I do know that I don’t just write for the potential paycheck. I write because writing is therapeutic for me. I write because I have stories and worlds in my head that need to be put down on paper. The pen is mightier than the sword, and in this age when Christian Nationalism is on the rise, it is the weak and foolish pen of Christian creatives who will offer the greatest counter to this prideful Anti-Christ. And even if I’m not writing my own stuff, I exist to help others better spread their own messages. Together we can pray for and promote the realization of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21,

May they all be one,
as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You.
May they also be one in Us,
so the world may believe You sent Me.

So I’m getting back to writing. I’m hoping to write 500 or so words of fiction a day, every day, for the rest of the year (with a slightly more ambitious goal for November). And while you likely won’t see that writing for a while, my hope is to release a new blog every Wednesday for the rest of the year.

These blogs will be book reviews, expositions, and challenges to live in love to find your true reward (FYTR). I am hoping to finish my exposition of Revelation in three more posts (22:1-5; 22:6-16; 22:17-21).

The next four book reviews will be Jürgen Moltmann’s Theology of Hope; Jenai Auman’s Othered: Finding Belonging with the God Who Pursues the Hurt, Harmed, and Marginalized; Richard B. Hays and Christopher B. Hays’s The Widening of God’s Mercy: Sexuality within the Biblical Story; and R. Zachary Manis’s Thinking Through the Problem of Hell: The Divine Presence Model.

This makes seven weeks of posts, which leaves us at October 16. In honor of Reformation Day, I plan on publishing a post related to the Protestant Reformation and our current Religious climate.

November will likely be a fiction-writing exclusive month, and December will be posts related to Advent.

My hope is to begin posting my 1 John expositions (paid-subscribers only) in January. If you are blessed by what you read here in the meantime, please consider becoming a paid subscriber ($7 a month or $75 a year), so you can benefit from those thoughtful, researched expositions.

Please forgive me in advance if I fail to accomplish these writing goals. I’m currently trying to land a second job to make our monthly income greater than our expenses (cf. 1 Timothy 5:8).

If you’re wondering how I can write this and still plan out 4+ months of writing goals, I wondered the same.

The answer: I can write 500 words in about thirty minutes. My blog posts average less than 2,000 words. Five hundred words of fiction a day plus <2,000 words a week for a blog comes out to less than 1,000 words a day (about an hour of writing). This is an accomplishable goal (especially if the second job is still eluding me).

If you’d like to keep up with me beyond the pages of this blog, give me a follow on Threads @lilfytr (which is the same as my Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube handles, though I am most active on Threads). Your support and encouragement and prayers are greatly appreciated.

In this with you!

Thanks for reading.