Lesson(s) Learned

I remember when I was in elementary school that "your momma" jokes were a big thing. They often went something like this... "Your momma.....(fill in the blank with something juvenile-yet-offensive about that person's momma)" The next kid replies, "oh yeah, well, your momma...(fill in the blank with something equally as juvenile about that person'a momma)" And then the crowd surrounding the two kids would all be like, "OOOOO!" And well, that was about the end of it. So yeah. "Your momma" jokes were probably the most juvenile thing since the cootie shot, but for some reason, school-kids thought it was cool - unless they were referring to your momma, of course. So it makes me wonder, Why were "your momma" jokes even a thing? Like, why wasn't it "your daddy" jokes? Perhaps, it's because if someone made fun of our daddy's, we'd just be like "yeah that's not true, my dad can beat u...

Have you ever sat back and wondered, why is it called 'motherhood'? When I think of the word 'motherhood,' the only other word that readily comes to the top of my mind is 'neighborhood.' So what it is? Simply put, a neighborhood is a collection of neighbors all together. (Unless it's a neighborhood where the people are not-so-neighborly, then it's just more affectionately referred to as the 'hood. If you ever find yourself there, I have some advice: Proceed (ever-so-swiftly) with caution, girl.) I digress. If a neighborhood is simply a collection of neighbors, then why isn't motherhood a collection of mothers all together? And if it is supposed to be a collection of mothers all together, then why does it feel less neighborly than we possibly hoped or imagined, and it feels more like trying to survive a day in the 'hood? (Be serious. You know it sometimes does feel that way.) And all of this non-neighborly motherhood business starts day ...

So, it's been an incredibly long time since I've written anything. Most of the time, I'm busy with regular stay-at-home-mommy to-do lists, a silly amount of craft attempts, and two toddlers. I've often used this as my excuse for not "making time" to write. Oh. so. often. Oftentimes and very lately, I haven't written any blogs because I've briefly thought (and maybe even truly believed) that I had nothing to say, or at least, next to nothing interesting to say. Unless you want me to quote something from Daniel Tiger (or worse, Clifford), break out in  a word-for-word verbatim of a Disney song (almost. any. Disney. song.), give you a total count of laundry loads I've mastered or the amount of sibling-fights I've broken up, there's really not much left of major "report" to my days. I'm in no way demeaning or belittling the huge responsibility, overall importance, and beautiful gift of God through motherhood. I am, however, ackn...

Oftentimes, it’s easy to see one snapshot of a person’s life and make a “snap” judgement. I’ll give you two personal examples of this. Back in 2011, I was given the great opportunity to speak on stage & share the Gospel with the women at a church in Tiburon, Haiti. If someone were to take a snapshot-judgment of my life then, I’d probably gain a lot of respect from fellow Christians. What a wonderful thing I was doing!  Fast forward to 2017, I was admitted to the behavioral health floor of the hospital (for the second time). I sat down to a meal with a man struggling with PTSD and on the verge of suicide when his neighbor called for help & got him admitted into the hospital. Through both of our very broken mindsets, God graced me the opportunity to share with him the hope that can be found in the Bible. I encouraged him to read his Bible that night, and the next morning at breakfast he told me that he read the Bible for the first time. Pause. Had someone taken a sna...

Mental Illness & the Family of God Growing up, I was always raised with the thought line, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Over the years, I’ve come to realize that sometimes what is “nice” and what is necessary to voice aren’t always the same thing. For example, it’s not nice to tell someone that they are a sinner. It is actually quite offensive. No one likes to be told that they’re wrong. But telling someone they are a sinner is necessary to leading them into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Staying silent and being “nice” are actually the opposite of what Scripture admonishes us to do when it says to SPEAK the truth in love. When you love someone, you will speak truth to them. Even if it’s offensive. I love my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, and I feel led to speak out with what is about to follow. As some may already know, God has graced me with a story that took me through a very dark time and brought me out to make me a witnes...

Marker Zebra Stripes It all started several weeks ago when my husband and I decided to watch Madagascar for the first (and hopefully, only) time in our lives. What I thought was just a questionable-decision-birthed-out-of-boredom turned out to be a full-fledged Madasgascar-a-thon when all was said and done. That’s right…so because Jeff thought Madagascar 1 was pretty hilarious, we ended up watching sequels. [Side thoughts: Why don’t filmmakers ever label first movies with a 1… letting you know there’s more to come.. and as a warning that you should probably just walk away from watching the first movie at some point, so that you don’t end up pretending to like it & be stuck in a Madagascar-a-thon. Just saying]. So we started watching the sequels, & they were really not great. at all. & yet there’s a ton of them. & then the spin-off movie. About the penguins. I just can’t. I guess I’m just not in a season of life to get that severely bored. So, all sequel-sadness...

The Birth of Hope  And then Hope was born. Hope Elizabeth. February 25, 2017. When she was born, all 95 percentile of her filled in a portion of my heart that I never knew was vacant. As most would agree, the birth of a baby tends to change everything. And for me, everything did change. And not just at the time of birth. Roughly five months after her birth, everything for me began to change again.  At the end of July in 2017, I experienced a mental “episode” that landed me in a mental ward at a hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. Later on, I would come to realize that this episode was due to two known factors: the diagnosis of hypothyroidism (my thyroid numbers were off the charts... even my doctor at Mayo Clinic said it wasn’t the highest number he’s seen, but it was pretty close) and symptoms that closely align with what is called postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis occurs roughly in 1 out of 1,000 births, so I doubt anyone that I know reading this would fully...