Thirty-two years ago, we said “I do” without knowing how heavy or holy those words would become. We’ve laughed until our sides ached, cried until words failed us, and learned that love is not proven by ease, but by staying. We have walked through chronic illness, uncertainty, and seasons that asked more of us than we felt we were able to give. Yet grace kept meeting us there, quietly faithful, never late. God built a family from our love,  children who became adults we admire, marriages that widened our hearts, and grandchildren who remind us that joy multiplies when love endures. Mike, you are still my safest place, my answered prayer, my partner in faith and perseverance. We are not the same people we were back then, we are stronger, gentler, and more deeply rooted. Thirty-two years later, I choose you again, grateful for every chapter, trusting God with the ones still to be written. “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” Psalm 127:1 “Let us n...

  I have spent most of my life caring for others. As an LNA, I’ve walked along side the elderly, loved those living with dementia, and supported special needs students in Intensive needs programs and those on the Autism spectrum. Caregiving has taught me patience, resilience, and compassion in ways nothing else ever could. When you do this kind of work long enough, you learn an important truth, you don’t just care for people, you grow to care about them. Most clients leave an imprint on your heart in some way, but every so often there is someone who settles into a deeper place. Someone who stays in your heart and thoughts. Trillium was one of those people. I spent nearly six years with her. Six years of routines and small victories, challenges and laughter, quiet moments that outsiders might never notice, but that meant everything to me and I believe it meant something to her as well. She was mostly non verbal, a word or phrase here and there, but we definitely con...

Although I wrote yesterday, a year in review, I am currently working an 11 hour shift and felt like writing some more, so if it is repetitive, I apologize. This season does not arrive quietly for me. The coughs, sneezes, the warnings about respiratory illness, the fact that I work in a Petri dish (school) and am exposed to all of it. The simple act of hearing someone clear their throat, all these things sometimes bring me back to last year. Like the title of a book I read a year or two ago, “The Body Keeps The Score”, my body remembers what my heart lived through. This whole week my back has been knotted and I’ve had crippling muscle spasms. I wonder if it’s related to last year at this time, being on my mind or just a coincidence. Mike was critically ill and every breath felt like something we had to fight for. Even now, fear comes before reason has time to process. Trauma does that, it lingers, uninvited long after the danger has passed. I have learned that faith doesn’t erase these ...

The beginning of the year found Mike in the hospital for 67 long days, with a week, or a 2 day home visit in between, before readmission. Days were filled with waiting rooms, unanswered questions, fear and prayers whispered through exhaustion. His health continued to demand center stage, starting with the flu, pneumonia, stage 5 kidney failure, starting dialysis 3 times a week. Eventually discharged to home on oxygen. A chest port placed then months later removed, an arm fistula procedure, a fall which caused a broken back in two places, his T11 & T12 thoracic spine, that added another layer of pain and limitation. Then he got another heart stent, a diabetic ulcer on his foot that took months to heal. For more than half the year he had a visiting nurse three times a week, a constant reminder that life had shifted into survival mode. Along side the medical battles came deep grief, 2 aunts, a cousin and several friends and acquaintances passed away. Loss seemed to stack upon loss and...

  I was only 19 years old when I had her, still figuring out who I was, let alone how to be someone’s mother. I remember holding that tiny baby girl with the chubby cheeks and head full of hair, thinking how far away the future felt. Forty wasn’t even a number I could imagine then, yet here we are. It doesn’t seem possible that in 5 days, my first baby will be 40 years old. In my mind, she is still the little girl whose hand fit perfectly in mine, the child whose laugh filled our home, the teenager who tested my patience and taught me more than she’ll ever know. Time moved quietly, and quickly, sneakily really, carrying us through sleepless nights, to school days, heart breaks and proud milestones. Becoming a mom at such a young age was both terrifying and transformative. I grew up along side her. We learned together, sometimes gracefully and sometimes stumbling our way through. I think she shaped me as much as I shaped her and although I made mistakes along the way, I wouldn’t cha...

Last year was the kind of year that shakes you to your core. The kind of year where the hospital hallways blur together, where every time your phone rings, your heart drops and where you start memorizing numbers on monitors that you never wished to understand. From December until February, my husband spent 90% of his time in the hospital. There were moments when I truly thought he wouldn’t make it. Moments when the fear felt like a boulder sitting on my chest and it was hard to breathe. I tried to be brave, to be a source of strength for him, I forced myself to smile when I could have just as easily cried. Inside, I was scared. When someone you love is hurting, really hurting, you start living minute by minute praying for small miracles and realizing how fragile life feels when it’s someone’s life you can’t imagine living without. We watched his health spiral in ways we never expected. Each set back felt like another piece of the rug slipping out from under our feet. I remember the exh...