Revealing Grace

Today it rained. If you have been following my story for the past 6+ years, you know that this means something to me. Often, I feel the love and presence of God in the rain. I don’t know why. I think it started almost 6 years ago to the day when I wrote a post about the rain. Today, I am writing a similar post. 6 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and on July 6 th , 2018, it was removed with a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and medication. Instead of celebrating my 6-year cancer free anniversary this week, I am scheduling appointments with a new team of doctors in Tennessee because, yet again, I have cancer. I know. We are all mad about it. Here are the practical details: It is on the same side, even though I had a mastectomy. It is teensy-tiny. It is just .4 cm, with my last tumor being 1.6 cm.  Here are the emotional details: We are sad. This puts a wrench in our plans to grow our family. This puts a wrench in our plans to go to l...

 I didn't talk about God for a while.  When I was younger, I never stopped. My oldest friend and I laughed last weekend about how I would pray for her to attend church when we were kids and tell her about my prayers. When I was in college, it was my purpose. On the reservation it was my profession.  When the waves of suffering hit, I still professed God's goodness for a while, but eventually it became too much. The waves kept knocking me down every time I tried to get up. I was sick in a cancer ward. My relationship with church completely upended. My marriage destroyed.  I stopped talking about my God because I couldn't make sense of my suffering or anyone else's pain. I didn't have any of my youthful certainty. I just had a whole bunch of questions and a whole lot of anger.  Until life got better. Until I got perspective. Until I stood in the snow among the Tetons and said to the wind, "Ok, God, I'm ready. Let's do this again. I'm with you." ...

 I've had a lot of endings that are also beginnings.  In fact, I've lived in Jeff's house for 3.5 years and that's the longest I've lived in a single home since I left Virginia at the age of 16. For over half of my life I have been without roots. I've lived in 9 homes in the last 12 years. That is absurd.  And the truth is, I don't want to be rootless anymore. I want to settle in, build something I am proud of, and never have to pack another moving box in my life. This restless, wandering soul wants to plant my feet on the same ground for more years than I can count and raise my daughter like I was raised in Virginia- with lasting friends and mother-daughter book clubs and people you grow up with. I haven't had a single place I've felt was truly my home since I left Richmond as a teenager, and I am ready to change that.  So in one week, we move to Tennessee. It is a place where a lot of our dreams lie. It is where Jeff will continue a career that he ...

People always say that raising a baby is "hard" and I never could quite figure out what that meant. To me, raising a baby is not hard. Washing bottles, changing diapers, and all of the other day-to-day tasks are not hard compared to say, running after-school programs for wild teenagers or trying to drive after your first big dose of chemotherapy.  "Hard" is not how I would describe raising a baby.  "Constant" is more the word I would use. It never ends and each day is an often monotonous struggle to get through the boring tasks and the thrown food and the toys all over the ground, while also giving big snuggles and too many kisses and being licked in the face without warning. It is a struggle, but of a different kind than that for which I would normally use the word. It is constant and a little overwhelming and sometimes maddening. Honestly, sometimes life itself feels both hard and constant. There are days when I feel the constant pressure of trying to ge...

 I’m sitting in the airport with Emma, delayed, again. I’m pretty sure American Airlines never manages a round trip without delays, at least in my experience. It’s been part of the game of traveling with Emma, often on my own, which I do a lot. Thankfully I’ve learned from my mistakes and have plenty of extra baby supplies on hand. And thankfully she’s a trooper who is able to nap anywhere. But seeing as today, in this airport, is also my 34th birthday, I figured some reflection was in order.  When my flights get delayed, I inevitably utter a few curse words (cue the early 2000s classic, “I’m not a perfect persoooon”). On the way home from England it was supposed to be straightforward, but instead became a 13 hour plane ride, a stay in a roach motel, and a flight the following afternoon. Today it’s me and Emma desperately wanting to get home to spend time with Jeff, who prepared imitation Chipotle for this farm girl with city tastes on her birthday. It’s so easy to get annoyed...

It has been five years, this December, since a judge declared my marriage officially over. It was the culmination of the worst season of my whole life. It was the end of something I had believed was forever. It was a season of bitter tears, struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide, and complete and utter hopelessness. Everything I had believed in had been shattered and in the end, I hadn't been chosen by the one who I chose to marry. I believed the false narrative that I hadn't been good enough, strong enough, or healthy enough. I was certain happiness would never find me again.  Over the next five years, I had to rediscover myself. I had to relearn my strength, my worth, my value. I had to heal from what had happened. I had to be angry and learn how to let that anger go. I lost my relationship with church and grew new relationships with a team of doctors when I got a cancer diagnosis just four months after my divorce was finalized. I had to figure out who God was, who...

I've always been fiercely independent, a bird with restless wings, the human personification of a Viking River Cruise (if you watch PBS, you know what I mean). But when this restless bird settled into a quiet life, I wondered if my wings would be clipped. Perhaps my passions would be lost to duties, my travels replaced with "it's not going to work," my love for new experiences put neatly in a box of memories and placed in the back of the closet.  You see, my husband is tied to this land we live on. It is a tether of his time. For most of the year he has no flexibility to leave. There is no such thing as weekends, PTO, or summer vacations when you are a farmer. Jeff loves adventure like I do, but often he has to place his commitment to the land before his own desires or preferences.  I thought that this would mean that I would become tethered as well, but Jeff has never tried to tie me down. When we met, he learned that my people are spread from coast to coast and that...