This is my hundredth entry.

I remember when I first started college and my mom told me I should start a blog. I knew about mommy blogs and food blogs and fashion blogs and celebrity blogs and look-I’m-adventurous-and-studying-abroad blogs. But I was only going to college, and most people I know do that. Sure, I liked to write, but I did not think I would have anything very out-of-the-way to say. I told her ‘No.’

Then one day that first fall semester, I was bored, and I made a wordpress account. A few days later I nervously posted this. And it stuck. The feeling of writing and having others read it stuck to my ribs.

Within months it became indispensable to me. I got used to the feeling of an idea growing in the back of my mind, of catching the little bugger and slapping it down on paper, poking and prodding and stretching its edges till it was just as I wanted.

I have written about my small travels, about sitting home, about my friends, about my classes, about my writings and my readings, and a great deal about my family. I have learned to write about my God in a way of which I never used to be capable. I am beginning to know him. This blog has caught much of the excess that often overflows my edges.

I often like to pretend that writing here is more than that, though. I like to pretend that writing an entry about a fear or a frustration will simply quench it. That just bringing it out of the darkness and showing it to the internet will kill it swiftly and thoroughly, and I can march forward in triumph without ever looking back. But it never does work like that. It usually takes much more prayer and patience than 600 words can carry until my fears are driven out into the swine.

But while writing will not heal me, it has taught me that I am not alone. My ugly ingrown fears and sins are wonderfully unoriginal and shared by many of the people who surround me. I know because they have told me so. Many of you have told me so, have reminded me that I am one saved wretch among many others.

I may very well have been right freshman year in thinking that I don’t have anything very out-of-the-way to say, but I’ve had the joy of saying it anyway, of being listened to, of crying and laughing at myself, of coming back again and again to pour myself out in convoluted words. I am tremendously grateful. Hooray, little one hundred.