About Me
Greetings and welcome!
I don’t know what set of circumstances may have landed you here on my page, but I’m glad you’ve come, and if you have a minute, I’ll tell you a bit about myself. Like many of you, I’m busier than I’d like to be, and often have other demands on my time, so I’m unable to offer daily encouragement here, but I will ‘show up’ as often as I can, and I hope you will offer me grace when I am inconsistent.
Perhaps you have come because you are grieving. I, too, know how it feels to grieve; how it feels when grief hits so hard you can barely breathe. I have traveled that long journey through grief that continues past the first few weeks, months, and even years.
Loneliness has often been my companion, and my life frequently feels broken and fissured. I know what it’s like to pretend all is well while falling apart on the inside. Brokenness and abuse are part of my story, and it has taken me a long time to see that God’s beautiful, redemptive work is most often seen in the most difficult parts of our stories.
It has taken a long time to process and accept the truth of my past, and the road has been rocky. I am still learning and healing, but I have not walked this road alone. I am grateful for dear friends who have walked this road with me, including Dana Taylor, Ph.D., LMFT, who was my counselor for many years and is now my dear friend. Without her help, I would not be where I am today.
Today I am learning to embrace who I am and the experiences that have shaped me. I am exploring what it means to be beautifully broken and live more than mended. And here, I write about God’s grace and goodness in this process. God has used the very things that broke my heart to both bless and slowly sanctify me so that in all the shattered pieces of my life, I have seen His goodness reflected.
Perhaps pieces of my story mirror bits of yours, so I hope that here you too will see God’s goodness to you.
Our family is still struggling and growing. We have suffered and survived trauma and tragedy, and we are still broken and fissured. But we are slowly healing, and I pray that as I write about our journey, you are encouraged in yours.
Life and Family
I was a wife for almost sixteen years, and I have been a mom my whole adult life. My children have truly been some of the greatest blessings in my life, and grandchildren are further evidence of God’s great goodness to me.
While I enjoy the blessings of being both a parent and a friend to my three adult children, my oldest son, Justin, was tucked safely in the arms of God before he ever reached adulthood. A few months shy of his sixth birthday, I watched him, his red hair gleaming in the sun and pride glowing on his freckled smile, ride his bike down dusty dirt roads. Then just days later, tragedy struck our household. Twelve years later – twelve years without speech or mobility- I handed him back to God. God used Justin’s life to drastically change mine, and I wrote about this journey in my book, My Journey with Justin. This is the story of how the Lord used his handicaps to open my eyes to the handicaps that lie hidden in my heart. It is a story of deep grief, disbelief, intense anger, heartache, surrender, grace, and overwhelming joy.
In 1985, I married my high school sweetheart just months after graduation. A country girl who loved sunsets, riding bareback, raising chickens, and reading books perched on the top rail of a fence or in the crook of a tree, united with a farm boy who disliked books but loved tractors and good, rich soil. Unfortunately, hurting people often hurt people, and our story contains much heartache. About to end in divorce, instead, our marriage ended in tragedy when he took his life on May 18, 2001.
In 2006, I discovered my youngest son, Jerrod, was gay. This has been hard for Jerrod and our family. Jerrod initially felt it would be better to be dead than to be gay. Unfortunately, the lack of grace and understanding in our family and his Christian friends has made his struggles more difficult. Pain and rejection have caused him much harm. But Jerrod loves God, and that has never changed even as he has wrestled with his beliefs and theology. God has used Jerrod’s struggle to open my eyes to the desperate need within the Christian community for love, grace, and understanding for LGBTQ people and their families.
For eighteen years, I had the privilege of educating my children at home. I managed my household and educated my children for 9 years as a single parent. Homeschooling taught me a lot about myself and my children, and I loved every moment of the journey. I cannot imagine life lived differently.
Part of the delight I had in homeschooling my children was that I have been, and continue to be, a lifelong learner. In an unexpected chain of events, I find myself back in school as an online student at Jesse C Fletcher Seminary, where I hope to earn an MA in Occupational Ministry.
Where I am today
Today, I am still a country girl who cannot imagine life without the tranquility of a starlit night or the silent pause that seems to occur just as the sun drops below the horizon in a golden ball of color. My mornings start with hot coffee long before dawn, and I like to watch the sunset with my hands wrapped around a warm cup of tea. On sunny afternoons, I enjoy long walks through grassy pastures. I love gardens, trees, vines, and flowers and spend lots of time trying to make things grow in the dry, barren soil of the Plains. As a full-time rural mail carrier, I am privileged to spend lots of time driving dusty dirt roads.
In this fissured, broken, and incredibly busy life, it is always difficult to find time to write, but for as long as I can remember, writing has been a part of my life. And while I would never say that writing has brought me more comfort and pleasure than my precious Lord, it is an extension of my praise and adoration for Him. I have often found myself scratching out words in a spiral notebook late at night or in the dark, wee hours of the morning. Occasionally, those words would find their way into a small magazine or publication. When mere words don’t seem sufficient, they sometimes flow out in the shape of a poem. Words feel like color and music to me, and I write them regardless of whether anyone ever reads them or not – I must write. When I am not writing, I am often pondering life and writing thoughts in my head, sometimes never finding the time to scratch them on paper or losing them before they find their way to paper, but always I am writing.
However, of all the many facets of my life, none are of any value were it not for the Grace of God that holds them all together. It is only through Christ in me that there is any hope of glory. It is by His grace alone that any good comes in or flows through my life, and so to Him alone is all the glory.