Recently, someone asked us about the purpose for blogging. It was a short conversation, so our response mainly covered SEO (how people find us via a web search) and establishing a brand. But for us, that’s really only part of it. Those reasons in large part justify dedicating several of our weekly business hours to said task, yet there’s so so much more that goes into it.
It isn’t really our style to do anything just for the sake of saying we did, so we continuously strive to utilize our website as a means for offering community and support to others. For our photography business, we write content in hopes of benefiting those who care about the same types of things that we care about – which most often ends up being closely tied to marriage photography since that is our area of expertise.
That answers the question of why we write for our business, but what about this blog? What do we have to gain from writing about our marriage on an entirely different site? For those of you familiar with SEO, you’re probably also wondering why we keep it separate since that certainly doesn’t help with hits on our website. Oddly enough, that’s exactly why we choose to keep this blog separate. What we share here is not about hits on our website.
So why do I write?
For starters, I find writing to be a great way to organize my thoughts. This blog is a journal of sorts, and we learn a lot about ourselves through it. To be honest though, we are extremely private and self-conscious people. Openly sharing our hearts and imperfections is one of the most terrifying things we can think of. I’m sure that seems absurd since the Internet is anything but private. Yes, we do realize that you’re reading this journal of ours. We even hope that you are!
Which leads me to my final point. The why we blog. Over the years, our hearts have ached over the unfortunate reality that we are all faced with constant comparison. If you’ve followed us for any length of time, that likely sounds familiar. Perhaps you’ve also already heard us mention that our aim in creating The Elle in Love has been to offer honest encouragement through insight that no marriage is perfect; that it takes a lot of intentionality and “work”, yet can be sweetly rewarding and more incredible than we ever imagined. We believe it is our duty to make it so.
For a long time that was enough for us. We felt satisfied knowing that was a worthy cause and didn’t consider that there could be even more at stake. Until we began dissecting every aspect of our business, this blog, and our marriage. We contemplated the really difficult why’s and discovered the calling to stretch even further beyond our comfort zone. Thankfully we also found we share a few core beliefs that will give us the strength and courage to do just that.
We believe that…
– Our highest purpose in life is to glorify our Savior.
– God doesn’t waste experiences.
– He works everything together for good.
As much as we selfishly long to present only the aspects of our lives that showcase “how awesome we are”, we feel that revealing the rest of the picture will shift the focus to what truly matters – how AWESOME He is.
We are a far cry from a success story! We don’t have a PhD in, well anything, and we certainly do not have it all figured out. At our best, we are open to the growth that comes through trials, even though at times it’s terrifying and we may even try to resist. Yet we believe – after much consideration and prayer – that our story is the. exact. story. that God has given us to share. One that’s not complete. One that we are learning from as we go through it. One that He will use for good.
Only if we are willing to share it, can He be ultimately glorified. For this reason, we humbly share our journey with you and invite you to read the rest of our story.
-m
