My Wife Made Me Do It...

So my wife has put the bug in my ear that I need to start a blog page. Now that I have a book up for sale (The Killer and Boyd Burgess), I need to showcase my writing in a more immediate way. So I go through the excuses. “I don’t know what I’d talk about. I don’t know if I’ll have time. I don’t know who would care to read what I have to say.” Her response to that was yelling at me, telling me to quit whining, and prodding me further to think about blogging.

Then comes my next line of defense, which was, of course, very similar to my first line of defense. I ask a logical question. “What will I write about?” After she rolls her eyes and bites down hard, composure returns. She calms herself and asks a very sensible question: “What do you think the world needs most?” Wow! I’m not sure that I’m smart enough to get to the bottom line as quickly as she just did. Of course! If I want people to read my work, shouldn’t it be about things that are important to me? I love my wife! She’s brilliant!

It doesn’t take me long to ponder the answer either. I’ve always known what I think the world needs to hear. That is, aside from all of the things that I spend my time thinking and dreaming about. The world needs help. The world needs light. The world needs direction. The world needs love. When I put all of that together, what I come up with is simple. The world needs Jesus!

“Oh, no,” you’re now thinking to yourself. “This guy is another religious fanatic that’s about to grab a soap box to stand on, become holier than thou, and eventually start preaching.” Well that’s precisely the opposite of what I plan on doing. My plan is to build a relationship with you, whoever you are, by showing you just how normal and non-preachy I am. I want you to see how flawed I am, how weird I can be, how strange some of my interests are, how much I miss the mark, how frustrating life gets, how terrifying it is to write a book, how deflated my balloon gets, how much I love Ohio State Football, how much I wish I could eat unhealthy food 24 hours a day, how much I long for a life filled with vacation, how much the hair on my back makes me feel like I’m part alien and part ape, and how none of that matters because Jesus loves me in spite of who I am. I want you to see that his grace is sufficient for me, and for you, no matter who you are. I want to talk about how wonderful a savior I have and how my hope is for everyone to meet him and have relationship with him.

The tricky parts come now. In order to do this, I have to convince you, whoever you are, to keep reading, not just until the end of this post, but more and more every time I post again. I have to find a way to entertain and inform. I have to be very personal instead of very preachy. I have to gain your trust; otherwise, I’ll fail miserably at introducing you to the man I know.

My hope is that you’ll give me a chance. I know that religion is a tough pill to swallow and that more people have been hurt by religion than by anything else in the history of the world, but that’s really the point. I have no interest in telling you about a religion. My goal is to tell you about a relationship that I have and how wonderful it is. If you will give me the opportunity, I vow that I will never try to beat you up. I will try my best to never give misinformation, and even correct bad information that’s been circulated in the past. I will show you my humanity and my flaws. I will talk about things that are important to me in my own unique way. I will even concede to try and not overreact when SEC fans take shots at my beloved Buckeyes and how soft their schedule is. (Ladies, don’t lose interest, there will be more covered than just sports, I promise.) If you’ll give me a chance and keep reading, I’ll give you insight into the life of Nathan C. Vance, I’ll answer questions about anything you ask me, I’ll even tell you about writers that I like if you care to know. I will try my best to keep from self-promoting and I will be as honest as is humanly possible.

So the question remains: why call it “The Utility Blog?” Utility means the greatest good for the greatest number. I’m hoping that’s exactly what this blog is.

My wife is usually my editor, but she is also an 8^th grade Language Arts teacher and head of a high school basketball program. There will be times when she isn’t able to proofread my blog before I post and I will undoubtedly get things wrong. Please forgive my grammar and punctuation mistakes. I promise you, when she does read the blog, I will be in plenty of trouble. What I want you to see is that I’m not perfect by any means, and that’s really the entire point. I’m writing to show my imperfection so that you can see someone who is perfect and how his grace carries me through. Don’t we all need that type of grace?