What Easter Looks Like This Year

There is no better picture of what Easter looks like than the cross that still stands in the rubble of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The cross is empty and triumphant. The rubble of our lives - the reason for His death lies at the foot of the cross as we are relieved of our sin and burdens. Two days before, Satan thought he had triumphed over God only to find out on Easter morning that God had triumphed over him. The empty cross and the empty tomb said it all.

For everyone who feels like a failure today. Leave that failure in the rubble at the foot of the cross and walk into a new future. Jesus died to free you of your sin. He died to free you of your failure. In that death He took all of our sin and failure on Himself.

Because of the cross, there is no wound He cannot heal, there is no failure He cannot redeem, there is no sorrow He cannot console. There is no burden we cannot give Him. There is no future that needs to be in eternal doubt. There is no path we need to walk alone.

This was a day that the world had never seen. Goodness actually triumphed over evil as it will one day soon. Hope triumphed over despair as it can for each one of us again and again. Life triumphed over death as Christ arose as we will one day from death. On this day the world changed forever.

Celebrate Resurrection Day. It shows the power of God when He triumphed over evil. It gives us hope for our own resurrection and life with God forever. It is a day of celebration and hope.

In The Hallway

I'm waiting for the waiting to end.
Waiting for the prayer to be answered.
Waiting for God to do something to bring relief.
But in the frustration of waiting,
Sometimes we forget to notice the meantime.
For in the meantime, God brings enough for today.
In the meantime, we see His strength in our weakness. We get so focused on the desired outcome
We forget how much He does in the journey.
And though we pray for change,
We can also recognize His being enough for today.
Jesus is our manna for this moment and the next.
His Life within brings strength and patience;
Hope, peace and light in the midst of darkness.
I am called to believe He will be enough.
And when I recognize His Life within,
Circumstances may not look different right away,
But my outlook will completely shift
As I walk in hope and Life through any valley of shadow.
Sometimes we are stuck in the hallway,
Wanting the door to open so badly.
But God reminds us He is with us,
Filling even our bleak hallway with the sweetness of His Life.

While We Wait With Hope

What do you think it was like the day after the crucifixion of Christ? Did Pilot wake up with a guilty conscience and wonder if he had done the right thing? Did the guards, who had mocked Jesus and then seen Him on the cross, wonder if an innocent man had died? Did the crowds, who had called for His life, keep an embarrassed silence in a quiet Jerusalem? Someone was nervous,  for they asked the Roman garrison to post guards at His tomb. On the day after, Jesus' friends mourned, the Romans were nervous, and some who had watched the execution were sure He was the Son of God.

It had to be a day like no other in Jerusalem. It had to be a day of quiet and consideration. It had to be a day of sober doubt after a day of impetuous action. I'll bet there were many disturbed consciences that day. The day between death and resurrection. A day of uncertainty and guilt. A day of hopelessness and sadness. But it was done and there was no undoing the events of the night before.

We have days like that! I have experienced whole periods of life that hang between hope and despair. Uncertainty reigns. Sadness is prevalent, maybe dominant. It is the time in between life as it was and life as it will be - but not yet knowing what will be. It is the dark night of the soul with all the questions, uncertainties, and unknowns. It is those times of personal chaos when we have no idea and little hope that life will become whole again. It is the loss of hope most of all.

It is the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is real and it hurts and all of us experience it just as the disciples did, only in different ways. But there is another day coming...we know and we look forward to that day of hope. Always remember in the day of despair that morning comes, and it comes with hope and resurrection power and salvation. In the in-between times, we need the words of Habakkuk, "Be still and know that I am God." Easter comes and so does Hope.

There is a whole book in the Old Testament devoted to those in between times. It is the book of Lamentations. To lament is to mourn and to be in sorrow. Jeremiah is literally walking through the burnt out ruins of Jerusalem after the Babylonians had destroyed the city. The city is largely deserted, the temple in ruins, most of the population had been taken into exile into Babylon. Think of the pictures you have seen recently of the cities destroyed in Ukraine and you get the picture. People living in the middle of rubble, hope gone, lives destroyed, bank accounts empty.

Jeremiah is deeply distressed as he wanders through the ruins and then these amazing words. “Because of the Lords’ great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’”

In the time of pain and hopelessness Jeremiah says, “your mercies are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.” Great is your faithfulness.

Jeremiah was living in that “in-between time” as we also experience. Where life hangs between Hope and Despair. It is the dark night of the soul with all the questions, uncertainties and unknowns. It is those times of personal chaos when we have no idea and little hope that life will become whole again. But we know from Easter that there is another day coming. Jeremiah knew that there was another day coming because he knew the character of God, who is always faithful. His mercies are new every morning. Tomorrow, as we celebrate Easter, we are reminded once again of His faithfulness and mercies toward us.

Always remember in the day of despair that morning comes, and it comes with hope and resurrection power and salvation. In the in-between times, we need to remember. Easter comes and so does hope.

On Easter morning:

The evil one was defeated once and for all

Our sins were paid for on the cross

Jesus rose victorious from the grave

We received hope of our own future resurrection

Death was defeated

Hope was restored

The world was forever changed

The Holy Spirit came

No matter what you are going through today, remember, Easter comes and so does hope. With God it is always so. The in-between times are not the final word. Easter and Jesus and the resurrection are the final word.

Easter Is Different This Year

 I have given very little thought to Easter this year. Life just keeps happening, and not all of it is hard. But everyday seems to have one thing stacked up upon another, sweet and salty sandwiched together with very little room in between. I’m struggling to find my breath.

Here in my tired bones and my tired brain and my tired feelings, I wonder if I should have done Easter differently. Perhaps with a little more forethought or planning, I could have infused a little more sacredness into these days and weeks. Perhaps then my heart would have been ready. 

But here we are on Good Friday, and Lent lingers like an afterthought—a song I hear dimly and want to sing, but I just cannot seem to find my voice. All I have is silence. A thick silence I cannot seem to shake.

While folding laundry this morning, the thought occurred to me: Maybe I don’t have to.

Growing up, I had a strange hesitation when it came to Jesus. Jesus was often talked about casually. He was more a saccharine Savior than comforting friend. There was something about Jesus that felt mildly suspect or perhaps over-simplistic, so I kept him at arm’s length. I thanked him for the past and handed him my future, but had very little context for how to encounter him in the present.

About a year ago, a friend and I were talking about her own hesitation conversing with Jesus, how for most of her life she was more comfortable relating with God as Father or Holy Spirit, but Jesus she struggled to get near or comprehend. And I related. I related hard.

As I contemplated her words, an unspoken ache rose within me. I did not want a sugar-coated Jesus. I wanted a Jesus who sits down with us in the dirt.

I want to know—beyond my theoretical brain—the Jesus who is both fully God and fully human. I want to imagine the way he moved among the people. I want to picture his tired feet covered in soil, the smile that spread across his face as he brought that first sip of miracle wine to his lips, or the deep exhale that escaped his chest when he finally found a few moments alone. I want to relate to Jesus not as some cheap imitation or far-off deity, but as a person familiar with the finitude of skin, “fully human in every way” (Heb. 2:17). And I want to know not only the historical Jesus, but also the Jesus who is with us still, whose presence I’m still learning to recognize in word and wind and ways of knowing that cannot easily be explained.

Perhaps silence is exactly what we need to see our humanity as an invitation. Because even though these holy days feel like a fog, disorienting and full of questions and flailing, it is here in the dirt of our lives we become truly acquainted with Jesus, who spread his arms wide open in the fullness of divine mystery and familiarity with mankind. It is here that our humanity is not a limitation, but a place for Jesus to find us—a sacred space for him to inhabit, to expand, and to dwell.

This Easter, instead of trying to manufacture some sort of sacredness, I am going to putter into Sunday, sit down in the dirt, and simply wait for Jesus to come near.

Filling Our Hope Chest

 Do you remember the old tradition of a hope chest? Long ago, a young woman would prepare a hope chest in anticipation of her wedding day. With hopeful dreams, brides-to-be would collect items like their grandmothers' china or heirloom linens to furnish their future homes. 

I didn't participate in the hope chest tradition as a young woman, but I'd like to invite you to join me in considering this old-fashioned custom as a new way to hold fast to hope. 

What if we stored up God's precious promises and our heart-wrenching pleas inside a simple wooden box to buoy our hope while living in a sin-sick world and longing for our future home? The visual reminder to pray and not lose faith soothes our pain while waiting for a relationship to be restored or for a hard heart to soften toward Christ. A hope chest packed to the brim with the treasures of God's Truth reassures our minds that God is still in control or a world dominated by hatred, and anger and destruction. 

Each day we are faced with Satan's lure to give up hope and give in to despair. We aren't the only ones. The people we love and support need to be reminded of our secure, indestructible hope laid up in Heaven just as much as we do. We need to tell ourselves and then repeat to them that no matter how dark life becomes, the resurrected life of Jesus provides an unending sunburst of hope. 

Hope doesn't come naturally to most of us even if we are glass-half full kind of people. I wrestled with writing this post while hope was slowly draining from my heart. But there is good news, the more hope is practiced, the more hope grows. Start building your own hope chest with the confident expectations. 

Hope is putting your faith for tomorrow into action today. Hope is bolstered when you're surrounded by faith-filled friends and family. Misplaced hope will always let you down, but the gospel is the true source of hope. The empty tomb on Easter is proof Christians are never left without hope. 

At Easter we relive the story of how a shameful and bloody crucifixion transformed into a victorious resurrection to everlasting life. We marvel again at Calvary where sin and death was conquered forever. Christ died in our place - the Righteous one for the unrighteous; the Sinless One for the sinful; the Holy God for the ungodly. 

The exuberance of Easter morn is like no other day. Yet, shouldn't we celebrate the wonder of our living hope each day of the year? Must we wait for Easter to roll around again to reclaim joy and hope? ( 1 Peter 1: 3-5)

Let's try a different path this Easter. To perpetuate resurrection joy. Let's pack our hope chests with the love and faithfulness of our loving Heavenly Father and revel in the joy that each day brings a new found hope to come. 

It Is Finished

 Jesus spoke these words through parched lips, his body broken by the hands of men. As he closed his eyes in surrender, darkness eclipsed the sky.

An eerie stillness settled over his friends and family who watched from a distance, because while they had been with Jesus, they could not see the Story beyond his final breath.

“It is finished” felt like an end.

It’s hard for me to sit in that darkness, to imagine what it must have been like not to know that Light would emerge three days later. To feel the void caused by Jesus’ absence without hope of his return. The heaviness is unsettling at best.

But then I remember: death must come before resurrection. We feel the hopelessness of Good Friday so that when Easter morning comes, we cannot deny our ache for redemption, for a life saturated with the presence of God. We gulp from the cup of communion because our dry and weary tongues are parched for his presence.

And so today, we sit with our longing. Our questions. Our uncertainty, our fears, and our frailty. We acknowledge our inability to see what comes next.

Because “it is finished” is not an end, but an opening—an invitation to let the pain of death lead us into a new kind of life.

In Search Of A Miracle

 In the depths of despair, when all seems lost and the shadows of uncertainty loom large, there arises a fervent plea for a miracle. It is a cry born out of desperation, a yearning for a divine intervention to illuminate the darkness and bring forth hope where there was once only despair.

In times of adversity, when the odds are stacked against us and the challenges we face seem insurmountable, we find ourselves grasping for the extraordinary, praying for a miraculous turn of events to alter the course of our lives. It is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, to our unwavering belief in the power of the inexplicable, the transcendental.

Yet, amidst the chaos and turmoil that often engulf us, we must remember that miracles come in many forms – not always as grand gestures or miraculous interventions, but sometimes as small, seemingly insignificant moments of grace and resilience. They are the glimmers of hope that flicker in the darkness, the unexpected blessings that emerge from the depths of despair.

In our quest for miracles, we must not overlook the miracles that already surround us – the love of family and friends, the strength we find within ourselves, and the countless blessings that grace our lives each day. For it is often in the midst of our greatest trials that we discover the true essence of miracles – not as extraordinary occurrences, but as the everyday miracles of perseverance, resilience, and the unwavering belief in a brighter tomorrow.

So, let us not despair in the face of adversity, but rather, let us hold onto hope and faith, knowing that miracles are not beyond our reach. In the darkest of times, may we find solace in the knowledge that miracles abound, waiting to be discovered in the most unexpected of places, reminding us that even in our darkest hours, there is always a glimmer of light, a beacon of hope guiding us towards a brighter tomorrow.

Weather Any Storm In Life

We’ve all been through big storms.  The rain comes down hard, the thunder is loud and darkness is all around.  The sun is nowhere to be found and the only light that we see is periodic lightening brightening the sky.  If the electricity is still working we hear news of thunderstorm or tornado warnings.  We may be directed to enter a safe place in our home until the system passes us by.  All of these factors can be very alarming.  Yet I have been through numerous storm warnings in my life and I am sure you have too.  The best way to get through the storms is to get to a safe place, and stay there until the storm passes.  The main thing we must remember is to stay calm because then we can think straight.  We won’t panic and make decisions based on our panic state.  Knowing that we have been through hundreds of storms before and each one went away helps us to live through yet another one.

In our Christian walk we are going to go through storms.  Nobody said that once we become a Christian storms will automatically pass us by.  The disciples of Jesus were in a boat one time and a sudden storm hit.  All of the sudden they were fearing for their lives.  The waves were beating heavily on the boat and the boat was rocking from side to side.  In the midst of the storm Jesus was in the back room of the boat sleeping.  Scared out of their mind the disciples woke Jesus.  “Jesus”, they said “Don’t you care that we are going to parish?”  Jesus got up and the first thing he did was admonish them.  “Oh ye of little faith”, he said.  Then he commanded the storm to calm and the storm was no more.

It’s interesting the words ye of little faith that he used.  In our daily lives when the storms hit us we tend to panic like the disciples did.  Just like in their case where Jesus was in the boat he is in our boat too if we have asked him into our heart.  With Jesus on board there is no reason to fear no matter how scary the storm is.

When Jesus comes into our hearts he gives us a peace that passes all understanding.  The problem that we have is that we don’t always live in that peace.  We can be like ten of the twelve spies in the Bible who came back and reported that the enemy was too big.  They were looking at the problems instead of the promise.  Isn’t that what we do when we get all upset because all we see is the obstacles?  So how do we keep the peace even through the tough times?  How do we go through the storms with big faith?

When you are in the storm remember who is on the boat with you.  Remember all of the storms that you have been through in the past with his help.  Find the peace that only he can give.  Lean on the Lord and seek his peace above all else.  Remember that whatever you are going through will pass.  After it is over you will have a story to tell.  You see without a test we have no testimony.  The weather in our heart can be sunny and warm even when the storms on the outside are at their worst.  Always remember who is the center of our peace with this saying “No Jesus, No Peace—Know Jesus, Know Peace!”

Watching Someone You Love Suffer

It is so difficult to watch someone you love suffer. You would give anything to help take their pain away, yet there is only so much you can do. First you focus on the logistical things you can do…sit with them…drive them to a doctor…make them a meal…give them their medications…put a pillow under their head…come up with things to try and distract them from their misery… But then you are hit with this reality that as hard as you are trying to make them more comfortable they are still in pain. And when you look in their eyes you can literally see how much pain they are in and it hurts to see…it rips your heart out to the point you’d literally rather take their pain on yourself than watch them suffer.

Today I feel drained both physically, from long days of watching my husband have one seizure after another, not responding or waking up after, and emotionally, from the pain of seeing the love of my life suffer. That pain only deepens when I feel helpless to take away his suffering.  It serves to remind us how much we love and value one another, and it certainly deepens our appreciation of those we love. But how wonderful would it be if all of us could do a better job of appreciating those we love when things are going good!

Don’t wait for someone to be hurting to recognize how much they mean to you – go out of your way now to show them how much you love them and appreciate having them in your life. 

Be Good Enough For Yourself

Have you ever stopped and thought about what it would feel like to be good enough for yourself instead of good enough for everyone else? Have you ever stopped and thought about how liberating that would be? How it would feel to be good enough exactly as you are and not care what other people thought? To live life in the way you were destined to live it, even if others don’t agree?

What does being good enough for yourself mean? It means showing up for yourself even when you don’t want to. It means trying new things and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It means trusting the process and having faith in yourself and your abilities. It means knowing your worth and then setting out to accomplish your goals because no one can tell you that you aren’t capable. It means knowing your flaws, your faults and your mishaps and loving yourself despite. It means falling down over and over but continuing to get back up and keep on trying. It means never giving up on yourself even when things get hard. But most importantly it means accepting that life is messy and being completely okay with yourself exactly as you are in this moment, forgiving yourself when you mess up, knowing that pain is temporary and that you are a fighter and you can get through this struggle, and no matter what, it means loving yourself unconditionally.

What if we lived our lives that way? What if we didn’t hesitate, didn’t second guess, but just knew our worth, accomplished our goals and had so much love for ourselves that we can’t help but spread the beauty of self-love to others? What if we stopped worrying, over-analyzing and doubting what people think about us, and instead recognize that those who don’t support us in our pursuits are not supposed to be along for our journeys? What if the main opinion that mattered about you was your own?

Self-love means being good enough for yourself and not for others. When you are good enough for yourself, you only allow others into your life who see the worth that you are showing.

Listen with intent to the thoughts in your head today. Are they negative and full of doubt of the beautiful person you are? If so, imagine what it would feel like to feel more positive thoughts, to care less about external voices and care more about the new, loving ones in your head. What does that feel like to imagine experiencing abundant self-love and self-positivity? Remember that feeling and vow to fight to feel that every day and with every day it will get easier to a point where self-love feels more and more effortless.

If you can be good enough for yourself, you are unstoppable, because you have told the world that you will be okay despite the naysayers and critics, because you know your worth and all you bring to this world. The criticism will always be there, you will just know you can rise above because with every critic, two more supporters come and because you stayed strong and positive, light and opportunity will be right there in front of you. You get in this world what you put out into it- so be strong, bold and practice self-love, everything else will follow.

When I was finally able to take steps to break my negative mindset and practice positivity, I became good enough for myself and I watched my mindset and my whole life change. Negative thoughts still happen all the time, but I am now good enough for myself, so I forgive myself and I feel proud that I try my hardest every day to kick the negativity out. I feel free because I am unstoppable, I feel equipped because I can stand back up when I fall and I feel happy because I know my worth and because I know that in the end, I will always be okay. I hope you all get to experience this same freeing power of self-love.

Be Beautifully Simply You

Broken and Made Whole

The broken places in our lives tend to form a kind of trauma that lives on long after the events themselves in the form of deeply held (but often unconscious) beliefs about the world and ourselves formed by the traumatic experiences.

A tragic loss of someone important to us may create an unconscious belief that it’s not safe to allow anyone else to get close to us because it isn’t worth the pain of loss that might happen in the future.

The failure to achieve something we set out to do may result in a belief that risk must be avoided at all costs. Or maybe we extrapolate that failure to mean that we are a failure, so we don’t bother aiming to succeed at anything else.

At the same time, our brains excel at seeking out evidence that proves our beliefs to be correct, while ignoring or dismissing any evidence to the contrary. This goes beyond confirmation bias to an actual unconscious seeking out of “proof” to support our beliefs.

For example, when I was researching the purchase of a new (to me) car a couple of years ago, I suddenly saw the model of car I was considering everywhere I went. My brain fixated (without my conscious intent) on showing me how common this car was as a validation of the “rightness” of my choice.

In the same way, one of the deep beliefs I developed out of broken places in my life is that I am not enough—not good enough, not lovable enough, not worthy enough, not productive enough, not valuable enough—you name it. If it’s something good or valued, I’m not it.

My brain, therefore, spends an inordinate amount of time trying to help me out by proving me right. It runs highlight reels of every failure, mistake, criticism, regret, and rejection all day, every day in my head on a continual loop to “helpfully” demonstrate just how not enough I am.

If I receive ten comments of feedback with nine being glowingly positive and one being critical or negative, my brain unfailingly latches onto the one negative one and ignores the nine positive ones.

To make matters worse, I have historically gravitated toward relationships with excessively critical people because their criticism of me felt normal and trustworthy. These choices just added to my (very long) list of highlight reels of criticisms from others in my brain’s compendium of “proof” of my not-enoughness.

When I consciously and objectively evaluate my life, I can see that there have been as many (or more) successes, occasions of positive feedback, and times when I’ve done good in this world, but I have to actively seek those memories out. My brain glides right over them in the continual highlight reel it runs in my head.

Your trauma-based beliefs are likely different from mine, but whatever they are, I suspect your brain does the same highlight reel in your head “proving” your inaccurate, trauma-based view of the world or yourself to be true.

One of the things I love about mending broken pottery is that it provides visual, tangible evidence that the brokenness in our lives—including the trauma-based beliefs that arise out of those broken places—don’t have to stay that way. It is possible, with healing, to see those same places in our lives in a whole different way from an entirely different perspective. As the pieces mend together so can our life mend. The broken lines may show through but with them we are made whole once again. 

I’m still not there yet with my belief of my not-enoughness, but I am slowly but steadily shifting that perspective by actively focusing on evidence that I am enough, by interrupting the old highlight reels in my head when I notice them going, and by choosing not to stay in situations or relationships that are continually critical of me or undervalue me.

You have the same opportunity for change.

Shooting A Second Arrow

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been listening to a variety of nonfiction audio books as I work. These cover a wide range of topics within the self-help and psychology subject areas, including habit formation (and changing those habits), reducing anxiety, developing better boundaries, dealing with life’s obstacles, prioritizing our highest values in our decision making, and increasing stillness.

What’s fascinating to me is that every single one of these audio books across this wide variety of topics wound up coming back to our thinking being the root cause of our difficulties. Every. Single. One.

It reminds me a story that the Buddha is said to have told. In distinguishing the difference between pain and suffering, he said that pain is caused by the things that happen to us in life. He likened this to be shot with an arrow and the pain that would cause.

Suffering comes when our thinking minds assigning negative meaning to the pain. He likened this to shooting ourselves with a second arrow.

For example, if I am attempting some new venture, and it doesn’t turn out the way I had hoped, the first arrow is the pain of disappointment. The second arrow comes from my thoughts that this makes the venture a failure, that it’s unfair, that life “should be” different than it is, that I am a failure, that I am not worthy enough (or good enough or smart enough or talented enough), that I will always be a failure, that this is proof that I will surely go bankrupt and be homeless and die alone of starvation.

Our minds veering off into this drastic worst case scenario, resistance to what is, and all the self-blame and self-degradation is what causes the pain of disappointment to turn into suffering trauma-based beliefs.

These books that I’ve been listening to have helped me realize that a lot of my thinking happens on auto-pilot and are nothing more than habits of thinking.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal until I recognize just how much my thoughts create those second arrows (and third and fourth and fifth arrows) that cause suffering.

Yes, life’s broken places (life’s losses, disappointments, heartbreaks, traumas, etc.) cause me pain, but I’m the one turning those painful experiences into prolonged suffering with my (often unexplored) habits of thinking.

That’s an empowering realization!

I can’t stop the pain life sends my way. That’s not in my control. The only thing I can control is my thoughts, and changing my mental habits allows me to eliminate (or at least significantly reduce) my suffering in the future.

Part of kintsugi art is looking for the gold in our past healing. One way I can do that is to look at past suffering and seek out the ways that my thinking habits contributed.

Even if I’ve healed from the pain of the experience, there’s a good chance that I haven’t changed the thought habits, unless I spent time becoming aware of them (which therapy is often helpful with). Seeking out those thought habits allows me work on changing them to reduce future suffering by avoiding those second arrows the next time pain arises.

By mining our past brokenness for these thought habits and changing them, we have the opportunity to turn old pain into gold.

Grace in Disguise

 When I was sixteen, my grandma fell in her kitchen. We later learned she’d had a grand mal seizure, and the fall was simply a byproduct of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease she was battling but knew nothing about. 

For months, Grandma was in a coma. Doctors were uncertain whether she’d ever wake up again. Daily my grandpa was by her side. Quietly waiting. Caring. Hoping.

And then, Grandma woke up. She was never the same cognitively or physically. Her condition required constant care, and living 2 blocks from us, we were the chosen ones. We assisted in Grandma’s day-to-day needs.

It was not uncommon for us all to eat dinner together or for me to pop over to Grandpa’s to help him with household tasks or watch Lawrence Welk. Our lives became linked to theirs.

Don’t be deceived: I was anything but a saint. In my teens, I often balked at the responsibility I carried. Because my mom was often busy helping my grandparents, I was put in charge of dinner or cleaning the house. Ever the drama queen, I was convinced no one else ever had it so rough. (Insert eye roll here.)  

But when I was nineteen, Grandma died, and the loss was palpable. Our lives had been so wrapped up in her health that her absence left more than sadness. It was disorienting. All of us felt a sense of “What now?” to varying degrees.

I could go back to being a “normal” semi-adult teenager—but that realization brought no joy. As hard as caring for grandparents was, the good was greater. That season held its sacredness, and when it was over, I struggled to adjust to the new normal.

One day, Grandpa called my house and asked me to come over. The request wasn’t unusual so I took off to his house and entered through our secret door in the garage. 

Grandpa sat there with purpose. It was no ordinary house call. He proceeded to tell me how much he had appreciated my help with grandma over the years since her fall, and then he held out the ring—Grandma’s ring—“I want you to have it.” Together, we wept.  

All these years later, I still wear her ring, as a reminder not only of my grandparents but also that God often allows what is hard to usher in what is good. And that is grace.