hope & healing for your journey through the unexpected
Do your days need more peace? More pause? More beauty and reminders of God’s presence? Mine do. Join me in paying attention to how God is meeting you right where you are.
Throughout the years, I’ve had to make some hard medical decisions—very few of which have left me feeling confident about the path ahead.
+ Am I making the right decision?
+ Is this what is best for my future?
+ What if things don’t turn out as planned?
Easy answers to these questions aren’t common, but time has taught me that while I might not always make the right decision, I can trust God will always walk with me through the next step.
Before I even opened my eyes, the knowing was there.
“I’m pregnant.”
Some call it intuition, others God’s voice—this deep knowing we experience on the rarest of occasions.
We are left with an unshakeable assuredness—a knowing of what’s true before the data is there to back it up.
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Purple crocuses pop against the backdrop of the dormant blades of grass—a sign that spring is on its way. Layers begin to shed as buds form on trees, and tulip and daffodil leaves miraculously sprout through the once hardened earth. Hope is palpable as new life slowly begins to surface and spring makes her debut.
The new life reminds us that nothing lasts forever. Seasons change. And the wait is always worth it in the end.
In life, winter seasons linger longer than we’d like when our longings go unmet. We fail to find hope as we grow weary and restless in seasons of waiting, but in the wait—no matter how long it stretches on—we can find the strength to endure knowing that God does not abandon us.
Since I was a young girl, I knew who God was and what it meant to be in relationship with Him. Throughout my childhood and young adult life, I’d built a relationship with Him—always eager to learn more, to find ways to connect with Him. What I knew, but never really experienced until I had to battle my health daily, was the gift of His presence.
The following is an excerpt from the ebook, Ungrounded: A Companion for Pausing in God’s Presence.
Growing up, our local dance studio was practically my second home. For fifteen years, countless hours were spent inside the studio learning ballet, tap, jazz, pointe, and, embarrassingly, hip hop for a few years. All the practice and hard work culminated in an annual spring recital.
Performing was something I had been trained to do, but being on stage was never something I looked forward to.
“You have handled this so well,” I heard time and time again while enduring chemotherapy to slow the growth of my rare tumor. A phrase that never sat well with my soul.
A people-pleaser at heart, the phrase unknowingly boxed me into having to meet other’s expectations of my health—a sense of having to handle my thoughts, feelings, and health well. While offered to encourage, the phrase laid out before me a stage—one that asked me to give the performance of my life—not for my sake, but for the benefit of others.
When navigating the world with a rare disease or chronic illness, we often have to lay down our plans to go at the pace our body, mind, and spirit demands.
We often think of these limitations as physical, but through the years, I’ve discovered they are just as much physical as they are mental and emotional. When the limitations we often contend with are beyond our control, we must remind ourselves that it is not only okay but necessary to go at our own pace.