My Story: Faith in Hard Places
There was never one single moment that made me who I am. It has been a whole lifetime of them, some beautiful, some that broke my heart, plenty that changed me in ways I never saw coming.
At the center of it, my heart has always pulled toward three things: my family, Jesus, and helping other people. That part has never wavered. The road to living it out, though, has been anything but easy.
The Seasons That Shaped Me
I have walked through things that rearranged me. Learning to be a wife and a mother. Adoption. Raising children with special needs. Coming through trauma that changed the way I see the whole world.
I went back to school and graduated at 40, then went back to work at 50, so I know something about starting over when everybody assumes that ship has sailed. Chronic pain has been part of my life too, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis both. People I loved and trusted have betrayed me. I have grieved hard, including losing my daddy, and I have sat close to the unthinkable weight of suicide, both attempts and loss, among people I care about. There have been long seasons of learning to forgive others, to ask forgiveness, and, some days hardest of all, to forgive myself.
Through every bit of it, one thing has held. Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness rises and falls with whatever the day hands you, but joy, real joy, comes from the Lord, and it can sit right there beside you in the hardest place you have ever stood.
How This Blog Grew Up
This space started small, an online journal during our adoption from Ethiopia so our family could follow along. Over the years it grew into homeschooling and homemaking and swapping practical ways to stretch what little we had. Then life got heavier, and the blog became a place to put it all down. Now it is something more than I ever planned for it to be.
It is a place for honesty and healing and faith in the middle of ordinary, unglamorous real life. I write for the person who feels invisible, the one who is worn all the way down, the one carrying something they have never said out loud to anybody.
Here is what I want you to hear. You are seen and heard and believed, and you are worth more than you have been told. You do not have to chase people or things that will not choose you back, and you do not have to keep auditing your own worth to prove you belong. Some days, breathing in and breathing out is the whole assignment, and that is enough.
What I Hope You Find Here
My prayer for this space is that it helps people find their voice and use it, learn to advocate for themselves, understand what safety really means, know the signs and the resources around suicide, and hold onto the truth that healing is still possible. I want it to be a place where you can sit down in the ashes of what you have survived and slowly start to notice there is still beauty in the room. Because there is, even here in the hurt and the chaos, and sometimes most of all right here in the ashes.
I believe God heals. I also believe He takes what we have walked through and uses it, to refine us, to teach us, and to get us ready to walk beside somebody else who is where we once were. He does this even when we cannot see the outcome, even when none of it looks the way we prayed it would. There is a purpose in it, and one day I believe we will get to see it.
Until that day, we hold on and we keep going, and we remind each other we were never as alone as we felt, that we are enough just as we are, and that not one of our stories is finished yet.
If you came here for encouragement, I hope you found a place to catch your breath and feel a little less alone. If you are a Kentucky resident looking for counseling, you can learn more about Circle of Hope Counseling Services, LLC here.
This is education, not therapy, and reading it does not make me your therapist. If you are in crisis, call or text 988.