Play the Background

I have a few dreams in my life.

To be a rapper.
To be a well known speaker.
To be a writer.
To run a restaurant.

Dreams are good. They give us focus. They give us drive. They give us purpose.

As you might have noticed, I haven't written much on this blog lately. In fact over the past two months my number of posts dropped significantly. I love to write and honestly I've missed writing here. I have a lot of fun poking fun at things and digging into the deep complexities of life.

But as much as I love writing, I desperately want it to take off. I want it to be read by thousands. I want people to read my writing and laugh and cry and occasionally think, "what's the deal with that guy?"

 So after every post that I wrote I would check my stats constantly. Sometimes I would check stats 10 times a day. I would get excited with every new visitor that came through. I became obsessed.

Then I got an urge. That urge was to push my wife into blogging. The only problem was that she doesn't really have any technical background when it came to setting up her blog but she had the topics to write about. She needed someone to run the background. That's where I come in. And it's why I haven't written much in the last 2 months. I've been playing the background.

The crazy thing is that God has been all over it and I haven't realized it until right now. Like right in the middle of writing this post. See I was so obsessed with getting big that I started to lose my desire to help people. I just wanted it to blow up and become popular.

I think that God knew this and so he gave me this urge. This urge that I gave to my wife.

This urge that resulted in the site www.momconformist.com. 

I think that God knew that I needed to take a little break from writing because my desire to be BIG was in itself getting too BIG. At least He knew more than I did.

When you realize that you are in the middle of something that God is doing, you can see some really amazing things.

In my writing I wanted to help people. By playing the background on Mollie's blog, I'm helping people in a way that can't be seen. And I'm helping more people than I ever imagined.

Momconformist.com (did I mention that was the name of the site yet?) has met goals that I never thought were possible.

For example: In 1 month, it has tripled the number the visitors and pageviews that this blog has had in it's ENTIRE existence.

Hopefully people are taking things away from reading it. And I still get to say that God used me to help others.


The point of this post wasn't to publicize my wife's blog (although I did plenty of that). It also isn't to just give you a reason why I haven't made fun of as many thing lately.

It's to challenge you to look at your life and consider this: Are you called to Play the Background? Maybe you are called to work in the background where there isn't much recognition. Where there aren't a lot of people congratulating your latest thought or post or tweet.

Maybe you are called to feed the poor without anyone knowing.
Maybe you are called to work with children during church services.
Maybe you are called to work with teenagers on retreats.
Maybe you are called to just sit and listen to others.
Maybe you are called to give up everything and follow God.

Maybe. Just Maybe.. You are called to Play the Background. What do you think?

jon



*this post was inspired by the song "Background" by Lecrae. Check it out on youtube. It's worth it.*