T is for thirty-two years of marriage. Not thirty-two perfect years, Not thirty-two easy years, Thirty-two real years. The good, bad and the ugly. If I lined them up, you’d see laughter, slammed doors, family dinners and hard conversations. Inside jokes and seasons when we barely spoke. There were years when love felt effortless, and years that felt like hard work and overtime. We fought…a lot. Mike was hard on the kids when they were growing up. He brought the weight of the world through the front door and set it down on us. There were wounds and there were words we both wish we could take back. There were nights that I lay awake wondering if love was supposed to feel this heavy. We almost broke up several times. The last time, I was planning a separation, papers weren’t filed yet, but my heart was half way out the door. Then came his diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis. We had never heard of this disease nor did...

                       I used to think sacred meant rare. Big, marked, set apart by ceremony. Now I am starting to think that sacred might mean slow enough to notice. To me, sacred is Mike, stable at home on a quiet evening, no alarms, no urgency. Just the noise of the tv and the comfort of us sitting in our recliners (yes, we are getting old) not needing to fill the silence. Sacred is spending time with my friends, whether it be a quick laugh at work, getting a matching tattoo with the bestie or having brunch with my sister, my tea and her coffee getting cold because we’re too busy laughing or sharing  stories we’ve told 100 times before but some how are still funny.  The kind of connection that reminds you where you came from. Sacred is spending time with my grown kids and my grandkids. Playing hide and go seek when your granddaughter announces where she is hiding every time. FaceTiming when miles separa...

                           R is for resilience Resilience doesn’t announce itself with motivational quotes or triumphant music in the back ground. Most days, it looks like showing up with a steady heart when your feelings are anything but steady. I used to think resilience meant bouncing back. Now I think it means staying. Staying compassionate, faithful, staying when quitting would be easier emotionally, even if not practically. Resilience is less about grit and more about elasticity. It’s the quiet stretch of soul that refuses to snap. It’s choosing not to become hardened by what could have made you resentful. It’s about letting suffering make you tender instead of sharp. It’s continuing to love without armoring up. Real resilience doesn’t rush the process. It doesn’t demand quick fixes and tidy endings. It understands that growth is often invisible and strength is often silent. It’s waking up and choosi...

  Q is for quiet.  The kind that comes after a storm. Friday night we drove home in a blinding snowstorm, the kind where the sky and the road are the same color and you’re not entirely sure which direction is forward. I couldn’t see  the lines in the road, I couldn’t see the edge. Half the time I didn’t know if I was in the breakdown lane or in the lane where I should be. I just kept whispering “Please Lord keep us on the road, and keep us safe.”  By the time we pulled into our drive way, It felt like my shoulders were up around my ears and my hands felt permanently shaped like they were still wrapped around the steering wheel. Finally home, but still feeling the stress of the last few days. Still feeling the disappointment of cancelling my trip to Florida, feeling like I was letting my granddaughter Noelle down. She didn’t know I was coming, it was a birthday surprise, but she asked me several times to come for her birthday and my daughter told me after ...

                       P is for Patiently Waiting (and Plans That Changed Overnight) I was supposed to be boarding a plane to Florida today. There should have been sunshine. Grandbaby giggles. Frosting on little fingers. A suitcase with sandals instead of snow boots. Instead, I’m sitting in a hospital room. Mike’s AV fistula collapsed from a blood clot. A thrombectomy was performed this morning. He's in dialysis now. The steady beep of machines instead of the sound of “Happy Birthday.” This is not the plan I had circled on the calendar. But here’s the thing about patience, it rarely shows up when you’re lounging in Florida. It shows up in waiting rooms. In the space between “we thought” and “we trust.” Mike's body has been fighting battles most people will never see — Ankylosing Spondylitis, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, a broken back, and today was another reminder that our life is often measured not in vacations, ...

  Ordinary used to feel like a place holder, like a filler between big life updates, the breakthroughs, the milestones or the moments that make good testimonies. But the longer I live, the more I realize, ordinary is where most of life actually happens. It’s morning tea, diving into God’s word, feeding the dog, packing lunch and heading out the door to work. It’s walking into a classroom and getting my student to focus. It’s sitting by my husband at another doctor appointment, it’s holding hands without needing to say anything, and yet this is where love lives. Not in the grand gestures, but in the repeated ones. In folding laundry, driving him to another appointment. In the laughing at something totally inappropriate. The world tells us to chase extraordinary, but God often meets us in the ordinary. Jesus didn’t build his ministry on stages and spot lights. Much of his life unfolded in small towns like Nazareth, around fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee, at dinner tab...

  I used to think “no” meant rejection. A closed door, a missed opportunity, a failure. A prayer that wasn’t answered the way I thought it might be. I have said no reluctantly in my life, to extra responsibilities, to overcommitting to things that would have benefitted others but drained me dry. Every time, I wrestled with guilt as if rest were laziness. As if boundaries were unkind.  Once I started dragging and then realized I have Hemolytic Anemia, I realized that saying no may actually provide me with the rest I need both physically and mentally. Sometimes my no, protects my yes. Yes to my husband’s health. Yes to being present with my grandchildren. Yes to showing up whole at work and not just running on fumes. Yes to sitting quietly with the Lord instead of falling asleep mid prayer, from exhaustion. Sometimes I have to say no to those who take advantage of my yeses. Then there is God’s no. The prayers that felt unanswered. The outcomes I begged to be dif...

                       If you look at a mosaic up close, it doesn’t make sense. It looks like a mistake. It’s just a bunch of broken pieces, jagged edges, different colors that don’t seem to belong together. Chips of glass, fragments of tile, things that were once whole, now rearranged. Up close, it looks like a mess. Step back though, it’s art, a masterpiece. My life has not been one solid slab of smooth marble, it’s been pieces, bright ones, dull ones and sharp ones. It has been a mosaic. There are bright tiles- my babies born and theirs babies born. Friendships that have lasted since childhood, a marriage that has stood the test of time. There are deep colored, sharp pieces too, hospital rooms, diagnosis, with too many syllables, long nights, learning how to be strong and soft at the same time. Becoming a caregiver when I didn’t apply for the job and some how loving fiercely in the middle of it. There are ordinar...

                             L , not for l essons or L ong winded l ife advice, just L .  It would be easy to jump in with L stands for L ove, especially because I’m writing this the day after Valentine’s Day, and for me L does stand for l ove in a round about way.  When I was thinking about words beginning with L that somehow related to me, I didn’t come up with much. When I think of l ove, I immediately think of my husband, kids and grandkids. Then it dawned on me that the letter L is in every one of my grandchildren’s names. Britton’s L is in his middle name, and that’s ok, it’s neat that he also has it. Putting the L in each name was not planned by anyone but there it is, kind of l inking them together. When I write their names out, I see it, that  faithful little L, just hanging out l ike a family signature.  Co ll in Michae l,  De l aney Morgan, Noe ll e Morgan, L...

K Is for kindness, but not the kind you think. I’ve spent most of my life being kind outwardly. Kind to patients, students, family and kind to strangers who look like they are one hard sentence away from tears. Kindness for me has usually meant showing up. Even when I’m tired, especially when I’m tired.  Lately I’ve been wondering what it would look like to turn that kindness inward. Not indulgence, not excuses, not quitting when things get hard. Just gentleness, bause to be honest I speak to myself in ways I would never speak to someone else. Such as looking down on myself when I’m forgetful or Mike makes negative comments on the way I do some things, some days I just ignore it, other days I take it to heart and get down on myself too. I’ve always called my self fat, I mean I am, but I don’t do myself any favors by reminding myself of it. I often make negative comments about my hair or new wrinkles or how I’ve been beating myself up for not finding the time to visit my...

If juggling were an Olympic sport, I wouldn’t win a gold, but I would at least qualify. Two jobs Monday through Friday and every other Saturday, caring for my step father, Dave.   Organizing Mike’s monthly calendar feels like a job in itself, coordinating rides for the to and from rides twice a week to dialysis, I do both ways every Saturday, but have to find fill ins if I have anything else going on. Sounds easy, but his regular drivers also have lives and things come up from time to time, they have to switch a shift, have their own appointment, are sick, on vacation, etc. Not complaining, we are so grateful for their sacrifice, just saying how it is sometimes.Then of course he has other doctor appointments which I try to find rides for (pain clinic, cardiologist, vascular surgeon, pcp to name a few). Saturdays are their own special event. I enter what I call “my 4 hour Olympics”. I start by bringing Mike to dialysis, head to Walmart to fill up 8 gallons of water (our ...

  For most of my life, my identity came with titles. Daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, caregiver, LNA, worker. The list is long, honorable and exhausting. These are good roles, but somewhere along the way, I realized something unsettling: If I stripped those titles away, I wasn’t sure who I was underneath them. When someone asks, “Tell me about yourself,” I instinctively answer with what I do, or who I belong to. I am married, I have kids, I have grandkids (Grammy- the best title ever). I work, I care for others but those answers are all attachments. They describe my relationships, not me. While I love the people and responsibilities God has entrusted to me, none of them were meant to carry the full weight of my identity. Here’s the truth we don’t like to say out loud, roles can change. Children grow up and leave. Grandchildren don’t need you to have cookies in the house forever. Jobs end, bodies fail and if my identity is rooted only in what I do for or am to others...

  When our kids were little, our house was small to hold all 6 of us. The kind of small where you could hear every conversation, every slammed door and every mysterious crash that required me to yell “WHAT WAS THAT?” From two rooms away. Our house needed repairs we couldn’t always afford and updates we had to put off. However, it was full, full of noises, messes, arguments, laughter, love and the constant hum of life happening all at once. That house worked hard back then. It held scraped knees and late night homework, birthday cakes squeezed onto a crowded table and laundry piles that never seemed to shrink, no matter how many loads I did. It wasn’t perfect, but neither were we and somehow, that made it fit us just right. We ended up moving to another house on the same street, the structure was sturdier and we painted and put in a new floor. Still not necessarily anyone’s dream home, still humble to say the least, but it worked, God provided and we were grateful. The k...

  I don’t think gratitude is something you are necessarily born with, I think it is something we learn. I believe I have learned it through experiences, sometimes in easy ways and sometimes the hard way. When I was young, I use to think being grateful meant everything had to be good, neat, and Pinterest worthy. life quickly humbled me on that one.  Gratitude is finding things to be thankful for even when life doesn’t look the way you hoped it would. It’s thanking God when you’re stuck in traffic, the plans change and the to-do list somehow grows over night. It’s recognizing blessings that don’t always come wrapped in pretty packages. It’s learning to say “thank you God” not just when prayers are answered the way I want them to be but when they are answered differently.  I’m grateful for the obvious blessings: family, friends, faith, love, laughter. I am also grateful for the less obvious, or quieter blessings that others may not see or know about. The people t...

I find the funny in just about everything. Not because life is always light, but because sometimes laughter is the only way through the heavy stuff. Humor has been my coping mechanism for as long as I can remember. It’s how I survive moments that might otherwise undo me.  If you’ve ever been around my sister MaryJane and me together, you already know this. We laugh at everything. Once it starts, it’s nearly impossible to stop. It is absolutely not wise to seat us together in any places that require seriousness, reverence, or self control. Funerals, church, maybe a courtroom, a hospital waiting room, anywhere quiet really. Whatever you do, do not put us across from each other where we are bound to make eye contact, because once that happens, it’s all over, pretty much the point of no return. One subtle smirk, widened or squinted eyes or raised eyebrows and we are suddenly fighting for composure like our lives depended on it. Even when we aren’t together, but on the phone...

  Empathy isn’t something I was born fluent in, it was learned, slowly and sometimes painfully through walking beside suffering I didn’t ask for and wouldn’t wish on anyone. Empathy is more than feeling bad for someone. It’s sitting with them. It’s listening without trying to fix. It’s resisting the urge to compare stories or rush toward a silver lining. Sometimes empathy looks like words, sometimes it looks like silence and often, it looks like simply staying. Life has ways of teaching empathy through experience. I think mine started when I was a little girl, my dad was sick with heart issues and Emphysema, then as a young adult I started my career as a CNA and then LNA, often sitting with residents who were afraid, alone, feeling sick, or dying. Spending time and helping care for friends I loved dearly, as they battled cancer and ultimately passed away. Even though I have had many life experiences that have taught me to be empathetic, I think being married to, loving ...

D is for dogs, the four legged, tail wagging, soul soothing kind of happy. There is something about dogs that reaches me in a way few things do. Maybe it’s their unconditional love, no fakeness, no grudges, no keeping score. They celebrate the smallest things, love us at our worst and somehow make ordinary days feel fuller just by being there. They are happier to see you than anyone else. They act like you’ve been gone for years when in reality, you may have been gone for a work shift, or even just gone long enough to step outside to get the mail.  Dogs are like babies to me, when I see one, every instinct in me wants to stop, smile, and say hello, and I have to remind myself to practice a little self control. Dogs have taught me about loyalty and grace. They forgive quickly and trust their person deeply. I believe dogs are one of God’s sweetest gifts, created with just the right mix of joy, comfort and companionship. They don’t fix everything, but they do make life fee...

C is for Christian, not the polished kind, but the honest kind.   My faith is not flawless. I am a sinner and I fall short more often than I’d like to admit. I am not always the best example of what a Christian should look like, and I’m aware of that. I think I will always be a work in progress and am so grateful for God’s grace. I love Jesus and I am not ashamed to say it.  My faith shows up in choosing to stay faithful even when life feels heavy and confusing. In trusting God in moments where I don’t have answers and I don’t understand God’s plan, my faith helps me trust it. Believing he is near even when I don’t feel strong or certain. I believe in a God who stays. Not just in joy, but in suffering. Not just when I get it right, but when I don’t. Overtime my Christianity has become less about having it all figured out and more about surrender. Less about   appearances and more about dependence. Faith, for me, is lived out in imperfect obedience, loving when...

B is for Belonging Belonging isn’t about being noticed, it is not earned by performance or perfection. It’s about feeling like you are a part of something. It feels like letting your hair down or exhaling. For much of my life, I thought belonging meant fitting in. Knowing the right words, doing the right things, not being too much or not enough. I thought it meant being needed, useful and strong. While there is goodness in being needed, belonging runs deeper than usefulness. It says you are wanted even when you don’t bring anything to the table but yourself.   Illness has a way of stripping things down to the essentials. Chronic seasons, long hospital stays, dialysis schedules, exhaustion that doesn’t sleep off. These things have taught me that belonging isn’t found in how much I can give, it’s about who stays when I can’t give much at all. Belonging looks like friends who don’t rush the conversation. Like people who sit in the discomfort instead of offering quick fixes...

  I decided to try something new. I have had a bit of writers block lately, so I have decided I am going to do my blog for the next 26 days (or entries) about my self from A-Z, using prompt words for each letter that I found on Google. My first prompt is A is for Attitude. A Is for Attitude For a long time, I thought attitude was something you either had or didn’t. You were born cheerful, or you weren’t. You woke up positive, or you braced yourself for the day ahead. Life has taught me otherwise. Attitude isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about how we choose to act or react to situations, especially when things are not fine at all. I’ve learned this slowly, through work that asks a lot of the heart, through family moments that stretch patience, and through seasons where the days felt heavier than usual. There were times I woke up already tired, already worried, already unsure. On those days, my attitude wasn’t cheerful—it was intentional. Sometimes my best...

Been thinking a lot about a friend who is facing many of the things I have faced while dealing with Mike’s illnesses. It’s been a long, hard road that I have written about many times, the ups and downs, the burdens and blessings, the well intended advice, all of it.  My friend’s similar journey started about 2-3 years ago, when her husband had a stroke. Physically, he has recovered well, but mentally, he’s very unpredictable. He argues about everything, is very dismissive and argumentative of her advice or ideas. Insists on continuing to drive when he has had an accident and several times couldn’t remember where he left his car. He spends money foolishly and isn’t the doting father he used to be to their daughter. All these things cause stress and worry for my friend, but the biggest worry is that he doesn’t follow his doctor’s advice, he has diabetes and high blood pressure, yet drinks alcohol and eats poorly. As for their relationship, he doesn’t treat her the way a w...