I knew this Thanksgiving wouldn’t look quite like the ones we’ve tucked into memory. The calendar had to shift to fit kids’ work schedules and scattered availability. I had to recruit a backup cook because my strength simply couldn’t stretch far enough to carry a full Thanksgiving meal this year. And my husband had to bow out entirely when he scheduled a double knee replacement just days before the holiday.
Yet somehow, none of that made the week dull. I still managed to lock the keys in the car, faint while helping my husband and earn myself an ambulance ride—and a fresh set of stitches. And in true last-minute fashion, I found myself stepping in for friends and running the 8:30 a.m. Turkey Trot in thirty degree weather on Thanksgiving morning.
But today has been its own kind of glory—bundled in the cold, then thawing out in a warm, cozy house filled with the people I love. MarioKart championships, board games scattered across the table, quiet naps under soft blankets. It has been simple, chaotic, and beautiful.
I have more to be thankful for than words can hold. And as I count the blessings I can see—and the many I can’t—I’m lifting my gratitude upward. I pray you’re doing the same today, giving thanks to the One who fills our lives with mercies new every morning and goodness we could never deserve.
Happy Thanksgiving, friends. May your hearts be full and your eyes open to every grace He has poured out.
Being a friend of someone with terminal illness must be quite the roller coaster. I’ve had the privilege a few times, but never for so long a stretch of time as my illness has asked of my tribe. That in itself is a beautiful gift, but the cost of it is also not lost on me.
Being a friend of someone with terminal illness must be quite the roller coaster. I’ve had the privilege a few times, but never so long a stretch of time as my illness has asked of my tribe. That in itself is a beautiful gift, but the cost of it is also not lost on me.
There’s something both sacred and sorrowful about watching friendships move through the seasons when you are the one who is dying. In the beginning, the circle is wide — full of love and meals, visits and prayers, the kind of tender urgency that comes when people don’t yet know what to do but feel compelled to do something. It’s a holy flood of kindness, and it humbles you to your core.
But time, as it does, stretches. Months turn into years, and the edges of the circle shift. Some friends drift quietly into the background, not because they stopped caring, but because life resumes its relentless rhythm. Kids grow, careers change, and the crisis that once felt immediate now lives in the quieter corners of their awareness.
And honestly? I get it. I’ve been that friend before too — before this diagnosis rewrote my sense of time. I’ve meant to reach out and didn’t. I’ve avoided pain I didn’t know how to face. I’ve loved someone deeply and still failed to show up in the way I wish I had. So I hold that understanding now with open hands and no resentment, just a bittersweet ache that love sometimes outlasts proximity.
What’s left are the ones who stay through the long middle — not just the early crisis or the final goodbye, but the drawn-out, unpredictable middle where the reality of terminal illness stops being dramatic and just becomes life. They sit with me in the mundane. They ask the unglamorous questions. They know when to come close and when to give space. They’ve learned that faithfulness doesn’t always look like constant presence, but steady presence.
And then, there are those who come back — friends who circle in again after time away, sometimes awkwardly, often tenderly. Their return feels like mercy. It reminds me that love isn’t linear; it’s tidal. People ebb and flow in and out of each other’s lives, and that movement, too, can be grace.
I used to think loyalty meant never leaving. Now I think it means being willing to return.
So to my friends — those who have stayed, drifted, returned, or simply remembered me from afar — please know this: your love has carried me. Every text, every silence, every prayer whispered when you didn’t know what to say has mattered.
Illness has taught me that friendship isn’t measured in constant nearness but in the threads of care that remain, even when time and distance stretch them thin.
If I could sum it up, I’d say this: the seasons of friendship are not a sign of failure, but of humanity. And what a fragile, beautiful, sacred thing it is to be human together — even in the shadow of goodbye.
I had a new nurse come visit me last week. He was honest, kind, and thorough — asking all the usual questions about my medical history; the twists and turns that brought me here. I’ve learned to tell that story in pieces now, almost like reading from a well-worn script. When I finished, he sat back in his chair and said softly, “You’re really brave.”
He said it again before he left. And I smiled, but inside I felt a strange ache. Because I don’t feel brave. Not even close.
Most days, I feel like I’m just hanging on for dear life — doing the next thing because there is no other choice. Take the medication. Show up for the appointment. Face the pain. Rest. Repeat. There’s nothing glamorous about it, and most of the time, it doesn’t feel like courage; it feels like survival. The kind of survival where you’re digging in your fingernails, white-knuckling hope like your life depends on it, because it does.
But maybe, just maybe, God sees it differently.
I think about how often Scripture tells us, “Do not be afraid.” It’s not because life is easy or because fear never knocks at our door — it’s because God promises to be with us in it. Maybe bravery isn’t the absence of fear or the strength to charge forward. Maybe it’s the quiet trust to take one trembling step at a time, believing that God’s hand is steadying us, even when our own knees are shaking.
There are days when my prayers are nothing more than whispered sighs — “Lord, help me through this hour.” There are nights when I’m too weary to pray at all, and all I can do is rest in the truth that the Spirit intercedes for me when I have no words left. And maybe that’s what real courage looks like: surrendering the illusion of strength and leaning instead into the grace that holds me together.
I don’t feel brave, but I am learning that bravery doesn’t always feel like bravery. Sometimes it looks like showing up. Sometimes it looks like tears. Sometimes it looks like still believing that God is good, even when life doesn’t feel good.
If someone calls me brave, maybe what they really see is the reflection of God’s faithfulness — the way He sustains a soul that should have fallen apart by now. I’m learning to take that as a quiet reminder: this story isn’t about how strong I am, but about how faithful He is.
So no, I don’t feel brave. But I keep going. And by God’s grace, that’s enough.
About a week ago I discovered my first real, here-to-stay gray hair. At about an inch and a half long, the silvery strand sparkled in the light, and I squeaked with delight. I have been waiting for this day!
It felt almost holy, that moment of noticing what the world often calls a flaw but what Scripture calls a crown. The Bible says, “Gray hair is a crown of glory; it is gained in a righteous life” (Proverbs 16:31). A strand of silver is not something to pluck away or hide in embarrassment—it’s a shimmer of honor, the whisper of years lived and stories carried, a reminder that time is a gift.
The world tells us that beauty belongs to the young, but God tells us that beauty deepens with age. Every laugh line is a history of joy. Every crease carries the memory of burdens borne and released. Every gray hair gleams with testimony: of lessons learned, of prayers prayed, of nights endured and mornings met with new mercies.
Aging is not the dimming of the light, but the soft glow of it spreading, warming, illuminating. It is not a loss—it is a gathering. We gather wisdom, we gather perspective, we gather gratitude for the fleetingness of days and the eternity that awaits beyond them.
To age is to live long enough to love more deeply, to forgive more freely, to see life with eyes unclouded by the urgency of youth. It is to carry within us the sacredness of experience, the sweetness of perspective, and the quiet strength of having endured.
So when I see that little silver thread sparkle in the mirror, I do not feel embarrassed. I feel crowned. Crowned with grace, crowned with wisdom, crowned with the reminder that my days are in His hands and that every year is a jewel added to the story He is writing through my life.
Fun with gray
Aging is not something to hide. It is something to honor. Something to embrace. Something to rejoice in.
Because every gray hair is not just a strand—it is a song of God’s faithfulness woven into us, shimmering with glory.
I love giving gifts, and I enjoy receiving them, yet I struggle to accept one of the greatest gifts offered to me; the gift of receiving. It is a humbling place to exist, needing others’ love and care, and I find it difficult at times. I have realized because of my love of giving that it takes far more grace to receive than it does to give.
After years of priding myself on my strength, being humble is difficult for me. It’s hard to ask for help. Do you find yourself agreeing with me? Yet we are all in need in one way or another; broken and struggling but putting on the best brave face we can muster just to prove we can go it alone.
In this long, loooooong season of needing to accept the help of others I find that the luster of having it all together is wearing thin. I see the depth of brokenness within me and around me, and I long to connect in my brokenness. I long to be known and to know the true hearts of others around me.
At my core I am a doer. A server, a giver, a wear-myself-down-to-nothing all in the name of love kind of girl. Accolades for me, right? What if I told you it’s just a ruse for my pride and need for control? Control that blares I’m not needy, I can do it myself, I don’t need anyone— unless someone needs /me/, and then I’m there.
I have spoken with enough people to know that I am not alone in this. Well, maybe I’m alone in admitting it, but I’m not alone in feeling it.
For 35 years I basked on the pedestal of being able-bodied, capable of doing anything that needed doing. I spent decades believing my purpose was to wear myself out pleasing those around me. I knew the truth, but it was easy to ignore when I had strength on my side.
Culture convinces us that our success is measured by our strength. It’s a bold-faced lie that what we are capable of is what we are loved for. This isn’t living in the truth of the gospel. Thankfully God is continually gracious to keep showing me the sin of my pride and need for control. He patiently loves me back to the foot of the cross and reminds me of my need to be needy and not just needed.
It took the stripping of my strength by this awful disease to expose this to me, and I still have to seek grace often because my heart’s bent is on proving myself instead of letting myself be loved in my neediness. Jesus is breaking me of my strength and showing me the grace to be found in embracing my weakness, and the joy that it gives others who want to help.
I hope that you can find this truth in your own life. Don’t settle for being loved for your abilities instead of being loved for your heart. Resist the temptation to keep yourself busy in order to feel accepted. Look for the ways to slow and find your significance in something more real. Then notice how you find peace and rest in giving others the gift of helping.
I met Sandy when we both signed up for the Women’s Bible Study at University Baptist Church. We ended up in the same small group that met to discuss what we had read and watched. Being an introvert, and still fairly new to UBC, I gave myself over to the very extroverted woman who had an answer for each of the questions, and I did a lot of “soaking in” during that time.
By September 14, 2022, Sandy and I somehow talked enough to become Facebook friends, and from there she discovered that I was collecting nail polish to paint nails for women experiencing homelessness in town.
Sandy wanted to help, and generously donated to my small little mission.
From there my busted up short term memory doesn’t quite fill in all the blanks correctly, but I do know that Sandy started showing up for me again and again. In ways others hadn’t, and in quantities others wouldn’t.
There was nothing that she would not do for me; sit and patiently teach me all of the wise bits about marriage she has learned over the years, vacuum and mop my floors, pray and read scripture over me from a hospital bed, let me vent about a horrible day that didn’t really stack up to her hard day. Remind me in kindness when I need to reframe my thinking, or go back and ask someone’s forgiveness, and hours and hours of holding my hand and praying over me.
Sandy disciples many different women, and I was always aware how much that filled her plate, but it took me awhile to realize what she was doing was disciplining me too. Guiding me in love. Teaching me in wisdom. Loving me with grace.
For years I have prayed for Godly women in my life who will mentor and guide me, and I think I had all but given up on that ever happening by the time I met Sandy. Yet she walked right in and took the job. None of my mess mattered to her. My life expectancy didn’t matter to her. She was simply there for as many days as God would allow us to have together.
We have gotten to serve together, laugh together, pray together, and have hours upon hours of conversations about every topic under the sun, including the hardest ones that no one much wants to talk about. I can only pray that I will have the opportunity to be someone’s “Mama Sandy” some day, because what she has given me has been something I’ve needed more than half my life, and came at the most impeccable of times. As I tell Sandy, “Our hearts have been friends for a very long time.”
At the end of each year as I spend some time reflecting on the year before, inevitably a new word saturated in meaning is impressed upon my heart for the coming year. That word remains the theme of my photo album, and the compass to how I hope to lead my family to grow throughout the year.
This past year our word was Shalom. Many of you may already know that Shalom means peace. I was longing for peace at the beginning of this year, but it went even further to define our year as not just an absence of war, but an overall sense of fullness and completeness in mind, body, and estate. To make full restitution; RESTORE! This brought to mind one of my favorite verses, Joel 2:25. “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten.”
Every time I passed the 6 letters framed upon our front door I prayed for peace both within our home, and outside of its doors. I prayed that God’s peace would bring a sense of completeness to our home; to our relationships, our walks with God, and our friendships with others.
As 2024 drew to a close and I started seeking and praying for our word of this new year I began seeing it on repeat, the word chosen for this year. This year’s word is JOY. I anticipate we will be blessed with an abundance of joy, and we will also see it woven in and out of many of our daily experiences. Perhaps we will learn better how to give joy, and we will become accustomed to receiving joy even in circumstances we might not think to look!
As we wind down our time in Shalom, though still activity seeking where we can give and take peace, I excitedly welcome this 2025 season of all things Joy!
I hardly have any photos from Christmas this year. Christmas Eve I missed our candlelight service at church because I was too weak to sit up or stay awake.
Our candlelit tradition of “shepherds’ meal” on the night of Christmas Eve only kinda-sorta happened, because I wasn’t well enough to remember, or to get up and make different choices of soup and bread like I usually do. The night was rescued by a frozen tub of tomato soup found in the bottom of the freezer, and the calming glow of our advent candles. I lay in my hospital bed in the next room listening to the chatter, and chiming in silly questions like “what ever happened to the sheep after the shepherds left to see baby Jesus?”
Late on Christmas Eve I still hadn’t managed to wrap more than 4 gifts to tuck under the tree. Anyone who knows my personality knows that is the polar opposite of my checklists and neat packages tied with string weeks before December 25th. My husband and daughter came through by busting out all the wrapping (with the help of a healthy stack of gift bags) in the late hours as Christmas Eve melted into Christmas morning.
Christmas morning… well, really most of the whole day is a blur with more chunks missing than I’d like to admit.
What I /do/ know is all four of my babes were under one roof again.
My silly dream of a Hannah tree finally happened, in all her pink glittery glory.
Even through sickness and pain, the cozy warmth of a crackling fire still brought with it the memories of Christmases past, and the anticipation of more to come.
Zero kinds of Christmas cookies or fudge happened, but “Kitchen Trash” sure as heck still did.
I did not capture my traditional “photo every hour” series of Christmas Day, but I did manage to grab the still-frames of the most important moments of joy and togetherness.
And as the day wound down and the doubts crept in with the quiet, my wise sweet little sister typed out the balm that my soul so badly needed; I need to adjust my definition of the word tradition from “every,” and “have to,” to “some years,” and “like to.”
When I sifted through my unmet expectations I found that though I didn’t get the Christmas pickle unpacked this year, there was just as much joy and gratitude and wonder in the exchanging of the packages. And even though we weren’t able to visit the lights at the bell tower or drive the neighborhoods looking for the best displays, the twinkling in our own window was enough to cast that magical glow that makes you feel warm with anticipation.
This Christmas started out feeling like I dropped more balls than I caught, but as the day unfolded and the story of the Light coming into this dark world permeated each of our moments and traditions, all of it was suddenly more than enough. I was enough. Because He is more than enough.
Choosing Hope 