God Has All the Momentum You Need

God has all the momentum you need. That holds true for new bloggers as well as those who have been writing for years. If you are a new writer… write. If you are a seasoned writer… write. Move into your vision, because God has all the momentum you will need.

It’s hard. I know. Worthwhile things usually are the hardest to tackle for many reasons. However, life is worth sharing. Your life is worth sharing.

Practically since the day I made an entrance into this world, I have had a desire to write. My mom told me that I started carrying a pen and paper {and I think a calculator which explains my frugality!} at a very young age. Yes, I wrote. Poems. Doodles. Letters. Then as I grew older that progressed. Articles. Newsletters. Cards. The stuff I enjoyed creating visually. That turned into a career in media. Woo Hoo! I made it!

Or so I thought.

What I didn’t get right away after starting my first blog was this: I had not made it.

God had made it for me!

Oh, I was thanking Him all along, because I knew it was not MY talent, but HIS gift. But I didn’t really “get it”. That He had done it all ahead of time. I listened intently as He began to show me that all those years – since toddlerhood – He had been preparing me for THIS.

Encouragement and Love.

He laid those two words on my heart and a bell went off so loud that I nearly jumped off my chair. Yes, God! YOU prepared me. YOU gave me the vision. YOU gave me momentum!

As I pray over these very words, and the words I write every time I pick up a pen or lay my hands to rest on a keyboard {which is often wet with my tears from joy and sometimes from the memories}, I am reminded by His gentle loving tug – “I am loving others through you, Heather.”

{Here come those tears. Just from that sentence alone.}

I urge you, dear ones, who feel a tug to write or speak what God has done for you and through you, pray and ask Him to show your unique way of doing it. Jump out there. He will bless it.

EmmLeImagesCrane3

Wherever you look is where you will follow. Look to Him and you will follow His perfect lead in His perfect timing. I used to be hard on myself for waiting so long to really pour out my heart and soul on my blog and in my books. But then I listened. It was His timing. It was His momentum.

I followed His momentum.

He is waiting for you to follow. Go, dear ones. Fly!

Live Blessed ~ Heather

Heather MertensHeather has spent 40+ years wandering through life – at first aimlessly and now at last with drive, passion, and commitment to Christ who called her out of the darkness. Her life has brought depression and healing, death and life, destruction and repair, sadness and victory – and above all else … LOVE. Her prayer is that as you read through her life in an intimate way your eyes and hearts will land upon words that make you long for God even more. “When a life is touched, a life is changed. Sometimes that life is changed so drastically that it must speak.”

Heather writes at: 40 Year Wanderer
You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

 

The Super Easy Switch From Google Reader to Feedly

When my Mom called me in February to ask what I was going to do now that Google Reader is shutting down, I laughed in her face. Not the most respectful or gracious reaction, I realize, but the demise of Google Reader seemed an impossibility, nothing more than a ridiculous rumor.

I’m still not sure how she found out about the demise of Reader several weeks before the official announcement, but she did.

The rumor has been substantiated and the impossible is definitely happening.

I think I’ll cry now. Google Reader is part of my daily life. Hourly, if you want to be real about it. I follow so many blogs right now, there is absolutely no way on earth I am willing to go back to clicking on each of my bookmarks to see if thereís something new. No. Never. Ew.

But somewhere between crying over a techno-gadget and feeling lame for mourning a website’s demise, I found the solution! And guess what? It’s going to be so easy, even my Mom will be able to make the transition easily.

Step One:

Go to Feedly.com

meetfeedly

Step Two:

Click the maroon button that says “Get Feedly For [Insert Your Browser Name Here]” (it will detect automatically) and allow the program to install. (The Browser App is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari as well as Android, and iOS.)

(Note: you may have to click a few extra times to confirm you want to install, to bypass your security settings, and to allow popups, depending on your browser’s settings.)

Step Three:

Restart your browser when prompted.

timetorestart

Step four:

Sign into your Google account (easiest will usuallly be to simply open your Gmail) and then click on the little green Feedly button that has now appeared right next to your address bar. Feedly and Google will communicate and then ask you whether you want to allow Feedly to have access to your Google Reader Data. You do.

logintofeedly

requestingtoaccessreaderdata

Step five:

You’re done!

 

Yes, it was that easy.

In the first seven hours after I installed Feedly to Firefox and downloaded the App for my Nexus 7 Tablet, I already understood why Google decided to do away with Reader and why their usage has declined. Anyone still using Reader is stuck in the dark ages: Feedly is BETTER! (And Iím pretty sure thatís the first time Iíve said anything negative about any Google product.)

 

I love the aesthetically pleasing layout — there are photos and blurbs, not just lines of text!

feedlyispictures

Feedly doesnít merely give new content in chronological order, it automatically is filtering by popularity and ranking; I know at a glance which posts I need to read first and which can wait until another time. (How they do this? I have no clue. Iíll leave it to their masterminding.)

(But if you still want to see only the most recent posts, you can view by “Most Recent” and see only a list of post titles that looks exactly like Reader.)

justlikereader

Oh, and Feedly integrates fully and seamlessly with Twitter and Facebook, allowing for easier sharing to those platforms and allowing me to following what my Facebook and Twitter peeps are sharing with me.

Plus, Feedly is fast. Way fast. The same pages on the same internet on the same tablet load in half the time on Feedly. Not sure how, but it does. Itís also faster and easier to email links to my friends straight from Feedly.

See? Absolutely no trouble at all.

 Jennifer Head Shot
Jennifer is a daughter, a sister, a wife, a photographer, a storyteller, an adventurer, and (most recently) a patriotic America learning to love her new home in Canadaland

For the Faithful Blogger

By Mathias Klang from Göteborg, Sweden (friendship) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

By Mathias Klang from Göteborg, Sweden (friendship) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Faithful Blogger,I read your post. every. word.I can’t tell you all the ways you’ve impacted me because I’m not even sure I can explain how, except to say:ThankYoutrans
Thank you for pouring a bit of yourself into this sleep-deprived mama’s life. I was reading your blog at 2 AM when my 3-month-old woke to feed in the middle of the night.Or the time you made me laugh with that funny thing you wrote about being married to your opposite and I’d just wept over a disagreement that I had with my husband.Or that post you wrote that gave me the courage I needed to try engaging more with my little ones at home even though I have no formal training in working with preschoolers.

Thank you, friend.

I think back to the time when you told me a story about how you allowed God to love on you; because I really needed it when my baby was in the neonatal intensive care unit.

Your blog posts poured into me when I was restless due to Braxton-hicks contractions, or when I was looking for ways to breathe new life into my relationships.

Thank you.

The bloggers who astound me and to whom I owe special thanks are:

- Bloggers who aren’t afraid to include their beliefs and faith in their blogging
- Bloggers who get personal and give you a glimpse into their homes and hearts
- Bloggers who reach out and build relationship – they e-mail you back, they leave comments
- Bloggers who host link parties or facebook groups and want to build community

God laid this word picture of “THANKS” on my heart and I thought I’d share it with you.

THANKS

Your words are a healing balm to a weary and weathered world.

I encourage you to run the race with patient endurance ever mindful of the eternal prize. Throw off everything that hinders and the doubt that entangles (Hebrews 12:1).

I’d like to read more from your heart. every. word.

And know… you have my sincerest, deepest thanks.

In His Grip,

Monica

http://happyandblessedhome.com

Monica Pruett is a Christian mommy blogger at HappyandBlessedHome.com and can be reached on her blog or on Facebook. She’s the mother of two adorable boys and is married to her best friend Jimmy. Her passion is to be an encouragement to moms and she publishes free printables and crafts for preschoolers, devotionals for moms, and ideas for having fun together as a family. She currently visits over 100 blogs a week and truly enjoys connecting with others and sharing what God is teaching her in the areas of mothering, parenting, discipleship, and marriage.