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The Storm We Never Saw Coming

I was honored to be a guest on the Anchors & Waves Podcast with Jacque Carlson and Stacy Ludwig through Mission Hills Church.

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RECENT JOURNAL ENTRIES

A New Resolution for 2026

“That I may know Him…" Philippians 3:10As the end of 2025 drew near, my mind started drifting toward 2026 and all the things I might want to fix.Lose the pounds I put on over the holidays.Create better rhythms so life feels a ...

A Glimmer of Hope for 2026

I love fresh starts and new beginnings. There’s such hope for the new, the shiny, the untouched. Even Mondays, for me, feel like a new chance to get things right.The last two years, though, the turn of the calendar brought no real hope. ...

To Bear the Cross is to Wear the Crown

Reflection on James 4:8–10To Bear the Cross is to Wear the CrownThe most meaningful lessons in life cannot be learned from a textbook. All the libraries in the world could never teach someone what it truly is to suffer. Those lessons only come ...

A Lesson from the Barre

Last December I started attending Barre classes, hoping to get in shape for my daughter’s wedding. Barre is designed to build strength, stabilize the core, and improve balance. At the beginning, every class felt nearly impossible. I ...

Balancing Safe Spaces & Being Known

This week, I did something simple that stirred something complicated. After a workout class, I casually asked a couple of the women if they ever go walking. The sun was out, and I’ve been wanting to get outside more consistently—so ...

MY HOME AWAY FROM HOME

When you lose a child, something inside you dies too leaving you caught between two worlds. The world moves forward, but you feel like you’ve been left behind, standing at the grave of what once was. You wake up, you breathe, you go ...

The Friends Julian Left Behind

I’m missing my boy so much today.I spent many days in his room weeping, praying, sitting in the ache of his absence. But as time has passed, my busy days have softened the sharpest edges of grief, and I haven’t been back in his room in ...

MOURNING WHO I WAS, EMBRACING WHO I AM BECOMING

The Weight of Change: Mourning Who We Were and Embracing Who We Are BecomingA song came on the other day that transported me to another time—a time when I didn’t carry this heavy burden of grief. And for a moment, I longed for that ...

HOW MANY CHILDREN DO YOU HAVE?

Last week, we got the dreaded question. “How many children do you have?”It was an innocent question, asked in the middle of small talk, the kind of conversation that should be easy. But we felt the familiar tension rise in our ...

Reflections on Year Two

Reflections on Year TwoWhen I was around 12, I had an unforgettable experience at the beach. The ocean was familiar, comforting—but this day it wasn’t. The undertow was unusually strong and before I realized it, I had drifted far from ...

Dawn of Hope

I was dreading the holidays, of course. The silent, empty seat at the Christmas table. I’m supposed to be buying overpriced shoes for Julian, not flowers for his graveside. Cemetery visits were never what I envisioned for all my ...

My Anchor

Scrolling through social media feels like drowning in a sea of people who seem to have the blueprint to life’s problems. They shout about how to structure your day like a Fortune 500 CEO, sculpt your mindset into success, shrink your waistline ...

Something New

Halloween was always such a fun holiday in our home. With Julian’s birthday the next day, we combined the two events and celebrated in big ways. Our yearly parties involved friends, family, two kinds of chili (the boring kind for Noy and the ...

LAMENT AT THE POOL

Have you heard the term "the dark night of the soul"? There’s no question our dark night of the soul was that awful afternoon. But this dark night didn’t end with the sunrise. It stretched into days, weeks, and months and then the ...

A WORLD WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT

Parenting teens has been difficult since the beginning of time, I have no doubt. I know I wasn't the easiest teen to parent. But there are unique challenges in parenting this generation because they are navigating challenges we know nothing about. ...

AFFLICTIONS AS JEWELS

I wrote THIS BLOG POST last Good Friday, just eight weeks after Julian's death. We are still in the School of Grief, traveling that Via Delarosa. Fridays aren't quite so painful anymore. We don't ever forget what happened on a Friday, but it's ...

BATTLING THE VOICES IN MY HEAD

Over a year later and we are still battling those voices in our heads. The voices that say, “If only you would have…,” “Why didn't you see this coming,” “You can’t handle this anymore,” and so many ...