I haven’t written in a while.

Not because of “writers block”—whatever that is, or because I’ve been busy traveling the globe, slaying dragons and ending world hunger. Truthfully, I haven’t written because, well, life’s been getting in the way. And not in the aforementioned adventurous type of way, but in the every day—pressures, doubts, insecurities and fears—type of way.

Yep. I haven’t written because I’ve been fearful…and insecure…and I’ve been doubting myself.

You see, I’m passionate about writing. It’s what I realized I wanted to pursue after quitting my job during my quarter-life crisis. It’s also what I began pursuing fresh out of high school, before I freaked out and decided to be a Psychologist instead of a journalist (although a Psychology degree did teach me a lot of valuable human insight).

But lately, I haven’t been experiencing that passion. Instead, every time I’ve opened my laptop, I’ve ended up browsing the web aimlessly, while wracking my brain trying to come up with something cool and interesting to write about. So after two weeks of frustration, I naturally went into full throttle soul-searching mode and started digging deep.

I’ll cut to the chase. I admit that I’ve lost the purpose in why I write. In trying to pursue my dream, I got caught up in life’s pressures. I lost my passion of writing as a form of expressing myself, and began pressuring myself to write for money—get paid, monetize my blog, think of an idea clever enough to sell. I stopped writing out of love, and my writing became about what I can get out of it. Like a romantic relationship gone sour—in the beginning it’s exciting and fun, you want to give more than take, not worried about what you’ll get in return. After a while, the pressures of performance, trying to be happy, and having an agenda can start to drain you and rob your joy. When you stop doing things out of love and genuine service, everything gets rocky.

The pressure of performance has sparked doubt and insecurities that have led to fear. “What if I don’t make it?” “What if I’m not good enough? “What if I don’t come up with good ideas?” “What if I put myself out there, just to fail miserably in the end?” My thoughts have been consuming me—the thoughts that include how pointless this all is if I don’t get something out of it. Fear has been paralyzing me. Instead of writing, I’ve been worried about pleasing. Instead of using my words to influence, I’ve been worried about how much more interesting I can be compared to all the other creatives out there.

These realizations came to me as I began asking myself some honest questions. “How did you get here, Kat? Where did you lose it?” These questions led to ultimately ask myself why I started doing so in the first place. “Why did you start this blog, anyway?”

Well folks, for one, I love Jesus. Really, I do. This love motivates and moves me in everything that I do—especially write. I was a lost and miserable hot-mess when Jesus saved me. He made life make sense to me, and I want to share His wisdom any chance I get. Secondly, I stinkin’ love it—to write, that is. I’m an over-thinker who’s constantly taking things as deep as they can go. This can get tiresome at times, and playing Tetris with my thoughts as I write, erase, edit, and rewrite them, helps me make sense of myself. Lastly, if I could influence/change/help someone every second of the day, I would. My cellphone buzzes all day with friends reaching out to me for advice, prayer, encouragement, etc. This brings me joy. Really. If I can help even one person have a better day, then I’m happy. Writing allows me to accomplish this. Whether it’s writing through text, through an email, or putting my thoughts together in an article for this blog, writing gives me the platform to influence.

So, why did I start this blog in the first place? It’s simple. I started to write because of, well, LOVE.

I write out of love—love for Jesus and love for people. When I stop writing to influence, and start writing for myself, I lose the love and in turn, lose my purpose. And if I lose my purpose, I lose it all together.

There’s a powerful nugget of truth found in 1 Corinthians 13, verses one through three: If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

I now ask you, dear friend: what have you lost purpose in? What have you stopped doing because love stopped being the driving force?