I Am The Worst Blog Title-er Ever

I don’t even think “title-er” is a real word.  But whatever.  I recently learned on the style sheet for my book (it’s a few pages where they record your friends’ names correctly, the places you mention, and terms and phrases that you use, so that a proofreader knows to take care a not remove or change those things)  that apparently I make up words because “author coinage” was written enough times that I got a little giggle out of it!

So, anyhow I was just on the phone with my best friend Sarah who is a very excellent blog title-er. She is also a really good blogger and writer, but the thing I probably like best about her is that she’s just my friend. She calls me often though and says, “LOGAN!  What the heck is happening with that post title?!  Quick. Change it! It’s awful and noone wants to read about that.”  This happens fairly regularly.  Because apparently I have lame titles fairly regularly.  I’m sorry about that.

It’s true.  She loves me so she tells me these things. The best kind of friends do that for you.

The other day when I was fired up to an internal temperature that was basically as hot as the sun, and I called Sarah to tell her about it, she said to me “HANG UP NOW and go write about that!”  So I did. And then I called her back and was still kinda fired up and needed to let off a little more steam…because well, reality.  I told her I’d written the post and I think I wanted to call it something really bad like “The mean guy at the shoe store” or “my son pitched a fit in public.”  When I’m feeling really clever I might come up with something truly riveting like “stick to your guns Mama.” But still in the end, you’d have either been bored out of your gourd or really confused.  Because well…I am really the worst blog title-er ever.

Instead, when I was talking to Sarah, in my fit of prolonged irrational rage, what I actually said to her in my tirade was “I swear to you, I would cuss you out if I did not love Jesus!”  And she said to me, “please tell me you’ll title your post that!  In fact, whatever awful boring title you were considering, don’t.  You need to call it ‘I would cuss you out if I did not love Jesus.’ Just trust me and do it.”

“For real?  But gah…seems sort of intense.”

“LOGAN!  You said it!  Just put it and write the story and trust me on this.”

And because I trust my friend, I did it.  And funny enough, it apparently struck a chord.  Seems that people are either wanting to know if I did in fact cuss someone out, are intensely curious what happened that would make me want to cuss someone out, or maybe a small percentage wanted to read about whatever triumphal moment that Jesus must have made in my life to spare me a loss of my better judgement.  Some of you it seems just wanted to know you’re not the only one who has those moments.  For the record, you’re not.  And praise the Lord, if YOU are wondering about it then that means that I’m not the only one who has those moments either. Phew!

I wrote another post last week for Allume that was pretty important and I called it “Sabbath From the Hustle and Bustle” because well, it was about Sabbath and rest and pulling away from the grind to make room to hear God.  It was also about taking some time off from the conference.  Sarah called me and said “Logan….you did it again….bad title.  You need to call it ‘There’s No Allume Conference in 2016‘” so that people know what you’re really saying.

Somehow that didn’t occur to me…clearly Captain Obvious and I need to get better acquainted.  I left the title though because well…I just did that time.

So what if I’m a terrible blog title creator…I guess there are worse things.  But what I think about often after I hang up a call like that with Sarah is how glad I am to have a friend who loves me enough to want to help make me better.  I’m so glad to have a friend who has great skills at something that she is willing to share with me.  Because she could keep it to herself.  She could just want to dominate me in an imaginary blog title-ing competition  where she would always be the winner.  But she doesn’t.  Because friends pour out themselves and their gifts to help hone one another.

So it works like this…I help her pick paint colors and she helps me pick blog titles.  It’s a friendship made in heaven.  But for real, as stilly as it sounds, I really am just the most glad for people who love me enough to not just point out my errors, but help me correct them.  I’m glad for people who use their gifts to help grow my own.  The same friends who will be honest with you about the silly things are usually and often the same ones who will tell you when your parenting needs a tweak, your heart seems too hard, you need to stop being stubborn about THAT argument with your spouse and make up.  The best friends…this best friend of mine is not just with me in life, but she is FOR me, and she loves me to a me that moves past a crummy attitude, messy family moments, and even bad blog titles. 😉

Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. – Prov 27:17

And oh my words…as a complete afterthought here…let’s have a moment of extremely brief pause that there are more people than Sarah who care too because if not…my book “Curious Faith” could have ended up being called “God is Like Willy Wonka.”  And mercy….even I’m glad that didn’t happen! I did, for the record, still come up with the title…but have mercy…it takes a village y’all!