Splintered Loyalty

“A town or family splintered by feuding will fall apart.”

~ Matthew 12:25 (NLT)

About a year and a half ago, I stumbled upon a group of midlife bloggers. I think it was on Twitter. Or perhaps Facebook. I don’t remember.

What I do remember is how exciting it was to connect — if only online — with women writers from around the globe who were my age. Women who watched the Beatle’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. Women who remembered beehive hair and frizzy perms and Farrah lookalike hairdos. Women whose children, for the most part, had left the nest. Women who knew when someone spoke of the cutest Beatle or the sweetest Monkee, we weren’t talking about stars of an Animal Planet series.

My initial season with the group was lots of fun. We had monthly linkups on given topics. Sometimes Huffington Post featured quotes from the blog posts… or even entire posts from many of the writers. I spent hours reading blogs and posting comments and promoting posts for my fellow bloggers.

And I hoped they’d do the same for me.

Recess period

After six months or so, life pulled me in a different direction. Real life called me back from the bloggy world. I had other stuff to do…

Meanwhile, my blogging “friends” were busy with television appearances and speaking engagements and meeting celebrities and blogging conferences.

Me? I barely had time to see their activity in my Facebook feed or check in at the Facebook group. I was writing grant proposals and preparing paperwork to set up a nonprofit corporation and organizing health screening events and coordinating training events. Still, I yearned for the day I could get back to being on the outer circle of all the action… Watching from the sidelines, waiting for my turn to play.

But in the meantime…

One day I had an urge to check in on the Facebook group. I hadn’t checked in for weeks, it seemed…

I arrived on the group page just in time to see it all explode. Or implode. Whatever. The result was the same. The warm and fuzzy place for midlife women bloggers to meet and greet and support each other all fell apart… seemingly with a single post.

I felt sick.

Like a bad divorce, the house was divided. And the children cried. And friendships ended.

And also like a bad divorce, there are three sides to the story — the side who left, the side who stayed and, somewhere in the middle, the truth.

In the end, although I’ve tried to stay out of the fray, one side resonates with me more than the other. Sometimes, we need to follow our gut…

And just like that amazing group of fabulous, middle-aged women lost power with splintered loyalties and opposing goals, we must be clear with our priorities and vision. If we divide our loyalties and our focus, we may end up with a painful splinter in a place we never intended to be. A place where God never intended us to be.

I thought I had clear vision and purpose when I joined the group. I didn’t. However, I needed this experience — however uncomfortable — to see clearly. I needed to clarify my “why”.

Why I started this blog. Why I joined the group in the first place. Why I write.

“No one can serve two masters. The person will hate one master and love the other, or will follow one master and refuse to follow the other. You cannot serve both God and worldly riches.”  ~Matthew 6:24 (NCV)