Surviving the A to Z Blogging Challenge

“…I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.” Philippians 4:13 nlt

 

“I think I’m going to sign up for this A-Z Blogging Challenge,” my friend Angela wrote in an email. 

She included the link, so I took a look. After some prayer. “I don’t have time and think I’ll pass.”

That was around mid-March. Then, a week later, something overtook my sanity and I signed up to accept the challenge. While in my “out of my mind” state, I decided to use Women of the Bible as my theme. It was a Holy Spirit decision because it was time for me to stretch my writing muscles.

I found a website to give me a list of names and a few pieces of information about each of my subjects. That’s when the real challenge began for me as I dug further to find interesting tidbits to write about these women. My goal was to mainly use biblically insignificant names. When no names were found to correlate with the letter of the day, I had to improvise.

What did I get myself into?

Then the challenges of balancing all this with my daily life came. It would have helped if April would have been filled with typical daily life, but it wasn’t.

Within a day of my signing up, an opportunity arose for my 22-month-old grandson, who lives 300 miles away, to stay the first week of April. After his departure, I left for a 3-day writers’ conference. With half the month gone, I was ready to settle into a routine of daily blogging and doing the dishes…that is until we made a 3-day emergency trip to help our son.

Needless to say, the added events pressed me to keep up and I got behind. Blog hopping encouraged me to keep going—as my new friends neared the finish line and I lagged further behind my competitive juices kicked in. For most of the last week, I wrote and posted two pieces a day to catch up. The Z blog went up with two hours to spare!

Overall:

 I learned so much about my writing abilities and met some new blogging friends

Loved the comments

My followers increased by almost 50% and I signed up to follow several others

My biggest regret is not visiting more of the other A-Z blogs

It was a great experience and blessing from my Lord

Thanks to the organizers and my fellow bloggers…and all praise and glory to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Time to return to my regularly scheduled Monday blogs and bimonthly updates.