I’ve been anticipating this day for some time now! A year ago today, I started my commitment to write week-daily contemplative reflections in this space for you.

A year of being faithful.

I don’t know that I’ve ever told you the reason these week-daily posts began. It happened because of my graduate research proposal (which I wrote last spring, in May 2011) that studied the intersection of digital connectivity and spirituality.

How does the pervasiveness of the internet affect our interior lives?
What have we lost in our increasing lifestyle of digital connectivity?
What have we gained?
What do our spiritual lives need in order to thrive?
Where can we find spaces to stop, go inward, and connect to God and ourselves in the midst of all that clicking?

These are the questions I took with me into my research, and these are the questions that informed the commitments I made at the end of it in response to what I learned.

Through that process, I became committed to ways I could help.

This site began in October 2008 as a space to chronicle my own interior journey and explore my evolving ideas about spiritual formation as I studied. But in May 2011, on the heels of that research proposal, it changed.

It became an oasis from the noise. For you.

As I look back over this past year, I can see how God used this commitment to writing week-daily posts in this space to grow in me a greater character of faithfulness.

When I began the commitment, I often missed a day here or there each week. I averaged four posts a week, rather than five. And there was no specific place in my schedule where those posts got written each day. I tried to write them in the morning, but other commitments often took me away from home, so sometimes I’d write them at the end of the day.

Over this last year, that has changed.

My mornings are now a dedicated time of quiet with God, and every morning when I spend time in the quiet with Jesus, I ask him what he wants to say to you here.

This space is a regular part of my life now. A place that is a part of me. A place where I am faithful.

I feel like celebrating somehow.

As I’ve been thinking of ways to celebrate this last year’s journey with you, I keep coming back to you.

What kinds of things would you like to receive in this space in the new year ahead? Is there anything you’d like to see change?

I’m all ears to receive your thoughts if you’d like to share them. Leave me a comment or send me an email at christianne at stillforming dot com, and I will gladly receive what you have to say and see how it can be offered here.

Also, I’d love to be able to pray for you. If there’s some specific way I can hold you in my heart before Jesus, again, send me an email at christianne at stillforming dot com. I will hold you in prayer and then send you back a written response of that prayer.

Today, I’m celebrating a year of faithfulness. Won’t you celebrate with me too?