Snowflakes and Joy

In mid August my parents celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. A big deal in a country where it is stated half of all marriages last less than 10 years. As a way to celebrate, my gift to my parents and our whole family, was to pay a professional photographer to take family photos. A way to commemorate having both daughters and all three grand kids in the same room. Originally we were going to have them taken outside at a local landmark. The backdrops would be fun and gorgeous, a mansion for some photos and the mountains for the rest. You can't beat God's artistry as a background for photos, and the mansion is just a fun local area for photos. Well, the weather decided to act up, and Mother Nature threw a little crying fest that morning (the only time we had available for photos) and forced us to relocate. So, we moved inside to our parents' living room. A room were many a photo has been taken. We stretched our photographer's creativity and willingness to work wit...

In just a few days hence my daughter, my darling Snowflake will be starting first grade. I am ready and I'm not ready. She thinks she is ready, but you can still see the nerves. Anything new can bring about some nerves till the routine is down. Nerves are ok. It is just part of life. What I'm not ready for is the fact that my daughter is growing up so quickly. It doesn't seem like that long ago and I was snuggling my sweet newborn in our home in Virginia. Then, she was bigger and HATED her crib. She just hated it. So as the picture shows we modified things for her and once more sleep happened. Then, we moved to Wyoming, where we live today. We moved and she began to really grow up. She was a cute as can be baby, but she grew to be a beautiful little girl with piercing blue eyes, but I know, I'm just a wee bit biased!  This little girl didn't stay little for very long. In a quick twist of time, she was a preschool kid. Full of love, wonder, silliness, zest f...

My parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with a party thrown by their awesome daughters. The older daughter and her family came out from Wisconsin to help celebrate. Snowflake and her 3 year old cousin Dude had a blast together.  When the family had to leave there were tears, lots of them. I get it. I grew up 2000 miles from my cousins.  It was hard to leave them. Cousins are the best. So today to console ourselves we turned on music and danced together.  Snowflake tried to teach me to dab but in order to teach something you must first know how to do it yourself. The Christian life is a lot like my daughter wanting to show me how to dab. Too often we fail to spend enough time in study & prayer getting to know Christ, and then we are asked a question and we flail not knowing the answer. Luckily there is a remedy,  it is dedicated time being with Jesus, it is communicating with Abba, it is reading the Bible.  Once we know Christ we ...

One of the battles Snowflake and I have fought over the last 4.5 years is with sleep. She started out life as the greatest sleeper in the history of baby sleep. Quickly she was sleeping for 4-5 hours at a time. When she was awake she was inquisitive, happy and fun. When she was asleep she was O-U-T, out! She could sleep in the bowling alley! I thought I had birthed the world's best sleeper. I did not deal with new mom exhaustion. I was blessed. AND THEN... Well it started when she was fourteen months old. When our life changed. People say that little humans are resilient, and they are, but they notice and respond to major life changes. They are human after all and trauma affects us all, age doesn't matter. The young, old and in between are all changed by traumatic events, and Snowflake, she has a background with trauma. It isn't easy to lose a parent at any age, when you are too young to understand why that parent vanished and then the other parent moves you to a brand ...

Last night a storm blew through town. 65 mile per hour wind gusts, pounding rain and reports of huge balls of hail north of town.  It moved through quickly but left its mark.  At my house the mark was drowned tree limbs and the glass on my storm door broke. My Saturday morning was spent cleaning up.  Cleaning up tiny shards of glass from a wooden deck is not my first idea of how to spend a lovely Saturday morning. Yet I did it because I wanted to protect my family from getting hurt and messes require clean up before growing into even bigger ones.  That is true of emotional storms as well. Many of the storms I've endured have required work in order to move on. It isn't always fun or easy, but cleaning up the emotional mess in our lives helps us move forward and protects our loved ones. If you don't deal with the glass shards of fear, shame, guilt, & unforgiveness your loved ones are at risk from a short temper, an inability to take care of them and more....

Oh summer.  You bring us the heat of Hell, hamburgers sizzling on the grill, kids splashing in sprinklers, the woderful aroma of sunscreen, tents in the backyard, cars loaded for cross country trips and ice cream melting down the cone. Summer also brings so much more. Lazy days that stretch on forever. Twilight taking her time to arrive and the slowly growing fruits and veggies in the garden. I am not a fan of heat. I melt in 70°F weather. I thrive in Winter.  The chillier the better. Still, I am learning to embrace with joy all that summer brings. I love evenings in the hammock with my Snowflake, watching her play with her water balloons or going for evenings walks around the 'hood. Lazy summer days are not so bad. It's only taken me 30+ years to reach this monumental conclusion!

Many of us fight this battle.  The battle of social anxiety.  Our brains lie to us. They tell us what isn't true, bit to the point that we believe it. Social anxiety makes it hard to function, keeps from doing things we may otherwise enjoy.  Others of us battle PTS, post-traumatic stress.  This is not the feeling you get after a scary dream or an adrenaline rush.  PTS occurs 30+ days after a traumatic event.  It can last for days, weeks, months or years (if not treated). It is debilitating and awful. Many fight both battles each once feeding the other.  Mental health is important and not to be taken lightly. Mental and emotional struggles are not a sign of weakness, they do not mean you are "crazy". We live in fallen, sinful, broken world.  It is not as it once was nor as it will be when God restores it. There is hope because whatever struggles we face, no matter hope much of our life we have to battle, it is all temporary.  With death ...