Some blogs don’t allow comments. Others eschew advertisements. Still others don’t link to outside sources, preferring to keep the reader focused (or as focused as one can be, online.)
Here’s what I don’t have: stats.
I heard a few bloggers just gasp reading that. A few agents shook their heads. Some publishers cringed. An author or two who writes about platform thought seriously about smacking their foreheads against a hard surface.
And I get that, I really do.
I’m not sharing this because I believe the way I do things to be the correct, best or (worse) only path. I’m not saying that I’m better or holier than anyone else, nor am I saying my choice should be your choice. I’m sharing it as a confession—and as an affirmation. You see, I don’t have stats on my blog for two important reasons:
1. I’m a recovering performance addict.
2. You are the only you in the whole universe and that really, truly matters to me.
That first point is one of my besetting sins—something that keeps me humble and at work tending my own soul on a regular basis. If I’m too busy, too frazzled, too far from God, my need to be affirmed rises from the grave I’ve buried it in one more time. And one of the nails that I use to keep the affirmation monster inside of me pinned to the Cross is the inability to track what’s going on here at AnamCara.com.
I know how valuable statistics on blogs can be—I use various tools for my work at Conversations Journal and to tend the Anam Cara Facebook community. I believe that statistics tracking can help make a website more responsive, an online space flourish, important connections possible.
I also know that when it comes to things close to my heart, words that I whisper because they are so sacred or ones that I am called by God to shout as loud as I can, I can get too caught up in the response. Did people hear me? Did they like what I had to say? Too easily, I choose for numbers and trends to affirm the value of my words, rather than leaning back into the reality that I am the beloved of God, valued well beyond words. I get sucked into the social imperative to reach more eyeballs, get more clicks, as if those things denote success or meaning.
As an act of obedience in this space, I’ve chosen to keep Anam Cara statistics free. This is first a valuing of my own soul and my walk with God. It’s saying no to the crazy-making and yes to who God says I am.
It’s also an affirmation of who God says you are. Yes, you. The person whose very real hands navigated to this post. Whose very real eyes are reading the syllables on this screen.
You have a world behind those eyes. More story than I could imagine. We could sit together for days, weeks, months, years, and I would only ever begin to plumb the depths of what makes you you. Unique. Individual. An irreplaceable image of God.
It’s the same reason that I struggle when people ask me how many directees I have in my spiritual direction practice. It’s a simple question, I know. But the people that I journey with aren’t numbers. They are specific people with specific names and beautiful, varied stories. When asked that question, I come back with a fuzzy answer, not because I’m being sly but because I can’t think of those I journey with as object to be counted. It hurts my soul—it hurts theirs—to be thought of this way.
If I had statistics tracking this blog, it would be easy, must too easy, to think of you (yes, you) as a number. And you’re not.
If there’s one thing I want to get across in writing this, it’s that you (yes, you) are not a number to me. You’re not a commodity to be sold, you’re not a set of actions to be tracked. You’re not an object, able to be used and manipulated to my (or anyone else’s) ends.
To me, you are a gift.
You are a one who has come to this place, as a regular visitor or a one-time guest. You are welcome. You are valued.
You can be as seen as you want to be.
I don’t have statistics so that you can tell me your story, in your time. I’m not monitoring what country you’re in, not looking at how long you stay in this place. I’m not tracking where you go when you’re here, or what it is that you seem most interested in.
Instead, you can come here invisibly, view what you want, and stay as long as you desire. You don’t have to interact with me, and you’re not doing so on some invisible level that you’re not even aware of. Which means that each comment you make (yes, you) I cherish. Each comment is someone dropping a prayer card into a box in the sanctuary. It’s a reaching out to take my hand. It’s a real interaction with a real person—a real person who God loves deeply.
So, thank you.
Thank you for being here, and for reading.
Thank you (yes, you) for visiting here with me for a while. Know that you are valued, just as you are, for who you are, in this place.