Posts

What I Hold Onto

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People ask me sometimes how I do it. Not in a casual way, but in that quiet, searching way people ask when they are trying to understand something that doesn’t quite make sense. They see the road I’ve walked, the weight I carry, the things I continue to face, and eventually the question comes: how do you keep going? And often it is followed by another question, one that feels even heavier: why haven’t your prayers been answered? I understand why they ask, because I have stood in those same questions myself. I have lived in moments where I prayed with everything in me, hoping for change, for healing, for clarity, and yet nothing seemed to shift the way I thought it would. Those are not easy places to stand, and they stretch something deep within you. But my response has become simple, even if the journey to that simplicity has not been. My faith has walked with me my entire life. It has not been something I reached for only when things fell apart or something I leaned on only when I ha...
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Love Remains

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There are seasons in life when the path ahead feels uncertain, when the road stretches out in ways we never expected, and the direction we once thought was clear begins to blur. In those moments, it is easy to feel disoriented, to question whether we are still moving toward something meaningful or simply trying to find our footing in the dark. But even there, even in the quiet confusion of not knowing what comes next, there is something steady that does not shift or disappear. Love remains. Love has a way of illuminating what we cannot yet see. It does not always change the circumstances around us, but it changes how we move through them. It softens the fear that tries to take hold, it steadies the uncertainty that threatens to overwhelm, and it offers a kind of quiet assurance that we are not walking this path alone. When everything else feels fragile or uncertain, love becomes the light that guides us forward, one step at a time. There is something enduring about that kind of love....
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The Quiet Strength of Resiliency

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Resiliency is often misunderstood. It is easy to imagine it as a kind of strength that never bends, a steady force that stands firm no matter what comes against it. People tend to think of resilient individuals as those who do not struggle, who do not falter, who somehow rise above difficulty without being affected by it. But real resiliency is far more human than that. It is not about being untouched by hardship; it is about being shaped by it and still choosing to rise. It is not about avoiding pain, but about learning how to carry it without letting it define you. Resiliency begins in places most people would rather avoid. It does not grow in comfort or predictability. It takes root in the moments when life does not go as planned, when expectations fall apart, when the path you thought you were walking suddenly disappears beneath your feet. It forms in the tension between what you hoped would happen and what actually is. It is built in the quiet spaces where disappointment settles ...
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My Son, My Gift, My Andy

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There are certain moments in life that feel set apart from all the others, moments that seem to carry something sacred within them, as if heaven itself leaned a little closer to earth. The day you were born is one of those moments for me. I remember holding you in my arms for the very first time—the quiet wonder of new life, the weight and beauty of something just beginning. And in that moment, beyond what anyone else could see, it felt as though a whisper was spoken over your life. A promise. A truth I would come to understand more deeply with each passing year: you would always be a gift. Not just a life, not just a story, but a gift of love. And from the very beginning, you were mine to hold, to nurture, to raise, to love. Love doesn’t always arrive the way we expect it to, but when it does, when it truly comes, it changes you forever. The moment you came into this world, something inside of me shifted in a way I will never fully be able to explain. It wasn’t loud or overwhelming...
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The Weight and the Wonder of Loving You

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Loving someone with PNES, severe depression, and anxiety is a kind of love that reshapes you from the inside out. It is not something you can fully prepare for, and it is not something others can easily understand unless they have lived it. From the outside, people may see moments—episodes, appointments, hard days—but they don’t see the constant thread that runs through everything. They don’t feel the quiet vigilance, the way your heart is always listening, always watching, always ready. It becomes a life where love is not just something you feel, but something you carry, something you actively choose again and again in ways that are both beautiful and incredibly difficult. There are days when it feels like you are walking beside someone you love through a storm that you cannot calm. You can hold their hand, you can speak gently, you can sit with them when the darkness feels overwhelming, but you cannot take the storm away. And that truth can be heartbreaking, because love naturally w...
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The Uninvited Guest: Tax Day

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There is something almost comical about the way April 15th arrives each year—like an uninvited guest who somehow still expects you to have dinner ready. It doesn’t sneak in quietly, either. It looms. It lingers in the back of your mind for weeks, whispering reminders every time you see a receipt, open your email, or promise yourself you’ll “get to it tomorrow.” And yet, somehow, it always manages to feel like a surprise when it finally shows up. Tax Day has a personality of its own. It’s a little bit stern, a little bit chaotic, and just a touch mischievous. It has the uncanny ability to turn otherwise calm, organized people into frantic treasure hunters, digging through drawers and folders in search of that one document they know they had at some point. Suddenly, shoeboxes become filing systems, coffee tables become accounting offices, and phrases like “Where did I put that?” become the unofficial theme of the day. And yet, there’s something oddly whimsical about it all. Maybe it’...
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Planted in the Dirt, Growing Toward Light

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There are seasons in life that feel like they were never meant to hold anything beautiful. Seasons where everything looks barren, where the ground feels hard and unyielding, and where the weight of hurt presses so deeply into your heart that it becomes difficult to imagine anything good growing out of it. In those moments, hope can feel distant, like something meant for other people whose lives seem less complicated. And yet, even there, even in the places that feel the most broken, there is still something quietly present beneath the surface. Even there, there is hope. It does not always look like hope at first. It does not arrive with clarity or immediate answers. Instead, it often feels buried beneath disappointment and hidden beneath questions that have no explanation yet. But buried does not mean gone. It simply means something is taking place where you cannot yet see it. Before a rose ever blooms, there is a season in the dirt. It is easy to admire beauty once it appears in ful...
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