Revealing Grace

We tend to think of tragedy as those awful moments by which we can chart our lives. Thankfully, for most of us, those moments are few and far between- a one to five occurrence at most. But for a lot of "my" kids who live on the White Mountain Apache reservation, tragedy is commonplace. It comes knocking so often that eventually they just leave the door open. It becomes an expectation rather than a fear. It is always around the corner. Death, tragedy's best friend, strikes young and hard on the reservation I love. It isn't a thing reserved for grandparents or the occasional accident. It happens monthly. It affects people weekly. Young people on the reservation die in numbers that are unacceptable. The youth suicide rate on the reservation I love is 13x higher than the national average. That is beyond heartbreaking. In my four years working there 3 girls in their teens were brutally murdered. One woman was killed just a few yards down from our youth center while we...

There is this thing that happens when life changes suddenly. For a while everything is chaos. All you think about is where you have been and how you got here, and every present moment just seems to be a moment of transition. Your life past isn't here, but your life future is still to come. The mindset of transition colors every idea, thought, and emotion.   There is this thing that happens when life changes suddenly.  It turns out that it is hard to get used to peace when you have lived in chaos.   I lived in chaos. The lives of the kids I cared for were chaotic. My significant other was chaotic. Our life together was chaotic. And when everything blew up, the chaos seemed to reverberate in my eardrums and my vision became jarred with flashbacks. Because I was still stuck in the chaos.   Even in peace, I didn't know what it looked like to live without the constant barrage of everything constantly being one tiny step from completely falling apart. B...

Things can be hard, ya'll. I wish I could say that 7 months after my husband left and 1 exact month of being for real divorced, I am a fully functioning, emotionally stable being who is over it because God is still good and blah blah blah. But that wouldn't be true. I will admit that I'm doing a decent job at being a functioning human being. A majority of people who have met me in the last few months have no clue that my life was stomped all over with a boot covered in dog poo. And certainly, I will be the first to tell you that God is still good. But this sort of hurt, the stuff I have been through- it doesn't just go away.  And that sucks. It sucks because there are no quick fixes or magic potions. There is no amount of will power that can keep me from going ice cold at the thought of running into him one day. There is currently not enough truth in my head to keep me from doubting myself. In this unknown territory, on this road I never thought I would have to...

Ahh 2018. The sound of a new year. The sound of new opportunities. The sound of trying to figure out how dating has drastically changed since I was last looking for a potential person to date. The world is not like it was in college, my friends. They say that kind, single men in their thirties exist. But I don't believe them. So I decide to see what the fuss is all about. After all, there are plenty of online dating success stories. It worked in You've Got Mail . So why not try to find my own Tom Hanks in a chat room? With the click of a few buttons (and a lot of google searches to figure out how it worked) I created a profile on a dating app. I must say, it was weird. First of all, its so judgey! You get six pictures and a few words to not sound awkward, not accidentally make any sexual innuendos, and convince someone that based on photos and the wit of your profile, they should give you a chance. And the guys. The catalogue of guys. Oh man. Most of them lost thei...

Today I went to Target for the first time in ages and I bought a new doormat. I almost bought the doormat I had at my house in Arizona- a cute brown and black one. But at the last minute I switched it out for a new one, full of color. Sure, it was just a doormat, but for me it was also a moment of switching out the old for something that was fully me and mine, instead of holding on to what was. On the way home my friends Tiffany and Jeff called. It was an absolutely encouraging and strengthening conversation as we talked through what God is doing in our lives. I spoke of how deeply I feel joy now. Having been so entrenched in the darkness I now find joy so much more precious. I rejoice deeply in the joys of my friends and the joyful moments in my own life. I know how bad life can be, how despairing and hopeless, and so I seek to be grateful for every good thing now. The joy of my friends and the world around me is the most precious of gifts. Joy moves me and I hold tight to its b...

Throughout this whole process I have questioned myself. I have questioned my actions, my response, the things I should say, the perspective I should take. I have wondered if I should write about it, and if so, with how much detail. I have questioned because I wanted to figure out the “right” thing to do.  But I had no guide, no map, no precedent to follow. After all, I am a Christian and we do not talk about these things, let alone let them happen to us.   So a few days ago when I listened to a relatively transformative podcast by Rob Bell, I finally was able to take a breath and realize. . . I don’t actually need a map. I am the committee.   I can question what is “supposed” to happen or what everyone else thinks I should do, but really, I don’t need a committee to make my decisions for me. I am the committee and I can make those decisions for myself.   So, a few days ago was the anti-climatic “D-day,” the day my not-husband went to cou...

Today, on Christmas Eve, I sat in church and I felt the emotion of the Christmas story in a deeper way than I ever have before. Every song gave me chills, the scripture made me teary. I was overwhelmed. For here is a true fact: I love love.  Maybe it is because I now know that true love is such a rare and amazing thing, but any time I see or experience real love I feel the greatest joy. I love seeing my friends happy in their marriages or engagements, I love seeing families having fun together, I love how my grandparents care for one another. I absolutely rejoice when I see acts of love. It gives me life to see other people's joy. My therapist recently explained God's love in a way I hadn't imagined before, with an imagery that spoke to me: The short version of the Genesis story is that once there was the garden and everything was perfect, but we chose sin and had to leave. In that moment, God could have said, " Good luck out there, in the imperfect, diffi...