Sights Set Above: A Grace-Filled Reintroduction

It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything for Sights Set Above. And by minute, I mean almost a year. Yikes.

So why did I take such a tremendous step back? Well, it’s actually quite simple. There came a point last year when the success of this blog had become all-consuming. I wanted to challenge myself as a writer. I wanted to grow my audience dramatically. I wanted Sights Set Above’s presence on social media to take off. And in order to achieve those goals, my drive for success overtook everything else.

If you reread what I just wrote, you’ll notice God isn’t mentioned in any of those efforts. Double yikes.

Last fall, I realized that my goals for this blog had severely shifted, and not in a good way. What started off as a way to do something I love for the glory of God quickly turned into churning out content for the glory of me. My writing had become less of a product of sharing what God was impressing on my heart and more of an attempt to create content for the algorithms. This led to a hyperfocus on growing the blog’s presence on social media, which resulted in me spending WAY too much time on social media platforms trying to learn and recreate trends, and inevitably falling into my doomscrolling habit, all in the name of research (lol).

I knew something was wrong. The stress, the missed time with my family, and my now seemingly strained relationship with God all pointed to a problem. But I had blinded myself to what the problem actually was. Thank God, he lifted the veil and helped me see.

I had turned my sights away from his purpose and pleasing him, and turned them solely on myself. Ironic given the name of the blog. I had taken on habits that were unhealthy by anyone’s standards, and my metrics of success had shifted completely to worldly parameters.

So I stopped.

By God’s grace, I started making a lot of changes. The biggest one was getting rid of social media from my phone. I felt this change in every part of myself. I had no idea how addicted to my phone I had become until there was hardly anything left on there for me. But after a few weeks, the desire to escape into the world of social media began to wane, my connection with the pop culture world began to slip, and for the first time in a really long time, I felt present during the day. I remember a moment when there was a brief quiet in our home. The kids were playing well together, the house was mostly clean, my daily tasks had come to a natural pause, and instead of mindlessly going to my phone, I stood there and looked. I looked at everything God had blessed us with right in front of our faces. I wasn’t distracted or discontented by the pull of social media. There wasn’t a part of me living in the digital world anymore.

The second change I made was taking a break from writing. My motives for writing had become problematic because they no longer represented a desire to grow in my own faith and encourage others in theirs. They had shifted into something self-centered and success-obsessed. So I knew I needed to take a break and surrender that part of myself back to God.

Life after these changes was really simple. I returned to a consistent time with Jesus every day (is it really a surprise my motives had shifted when this part of my relationship with God had stopped being a priority?). I homeschooled our children. I took care of the house. I worked for my remote job and a small seasonal job during the winter that allowed my family and me to ski together. My kids and I started taking road trips together, my husband joining when he could. I met more of my neighbors, more of my community, and stopped living in the world inside my phone and started living again for the life God had placed right in front of me. I even started volunteering for our local Younglife group because I now had all this extra time on my hands! My goodness, what a blessing that has been.

The result of such a life has been an imperfect journey in grace and growth in my relationships with God, my husband, and my children. Some of the growth has been painful as God has been so kind to root out long-held sin patterns and desires. But all of it has become far more valuable than anything I was trying to live for at this time last year.

Over the last few months, the desire to write again has returned. At first, the thought of stepping back into it was frightening because I’ve seen how weak I really am. I know I could be swept back up into everything I’ve rid myself of in a heartbeat. But the more I pray about writing, the more peace I feel and the stronger the desire becomes.

So here I am. Consider this a reintroduction post. My prayer and my hope is that God will be honored in all that is to come. The posts I publish from here on out will likely be sporadic in their timetables and lacking in alignment to social media trends - I may post new blog posts on the Sights Set Above socials, but only from the safe checkpoints of my desktop posting apps; stepping back into the world of social media is not something I will be compromising on anytime soon. Sorry y’all, I’m weak! They will likely reflect the simple but joyful life God has been cultivating in our family over the last year, our road trip adventures, reviews of the books I’ve been reading, and what God has taught us in all of it. Most of all, I pray they become more evidence of how good and gracious our God is.

He has been so faithful during this time (and all time for that matter). He never let me go once, though I had certainly given him reason to do so. While I was confronted with my own weakness, he remained strong. When I was shown the depth of sin in my heart, he revealed the depth of mercy and grace he lavishes on his children. When I realized I had fixated my gaze inward on my own kingdom, he graciously revealed more of the beauty of his gospel and recaptured my gaze on himself.

Friend, if you’re reading this, I pray that you, too, would be bulldozed by the greatness and goodness of our God. I pray that your heart, though never able to reach perfection this side of heaven, would desire only to please him and glorify his name. I pray that you would join me in this journey of faith, one day at a time, in all of its missteps and growing pains as we grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. To him be the honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.