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​So many exclamation marks!!!

My husband surprised me by painting the room to the right of the stairs when I was out of town. 

He held the handle of the soft, purple roller in his callused hands. He cracked open the paint can. Carefully poured the creamy liquid into clear plastic trays. Like a sly finger in a bowl of cookie dough, he dipped the roller into the tray. 

Swipe. 
​Swipe. 
Up. 
Down. 

He covered the walls in a flavorful yellow called Meringue. I picked the shade after perusing Pinterest and carefully comparing a rainbow of paint chips at the Home Depot.

“Better, right?” he told me when I came home and followed me upstairs. My eyes looked like saucers as I spun around in this sudden room of sunshine. “I wanted it to feel like yours.” 

“I LOVE it,” I said. “I. Love. It. I can’t believe you did this.” I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and closed my eyes. He smelled like turpentine and soap. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.” 

In another life in another decade, the first homeowner wallpapered this room. The second pair of homeowners concealed the wallpaper with brown paint. 

Not dark brown. Not light brown. 
Just…brown. 
The color of cheap coffee, or milk chocolate, or fake leather. 
The color of my mom’s eyes when she’s unimpressed with a movie, or exhausted from a 12-hour night shift at the hospital. 

The brown paint had puckered over the layer of patterned paper. The wallpaper wasn’t visible, but it refused to go unnoticed. A silent “screw you” to the people who didn’t think she was good enough.

When we first toured the house, the brown bubbled paint in the small room was a bit….off-putting. 

Okay. Ugly. It was ugly. 

“We’ll have to paint in here, huh?” I asked my husband. I had never painted a room before. The thought of this new task made me nervous the way new tasks always did. 

He nodded. “Yeah, we can do that, no problem.”

I glanced around the narrow room. It was almost too small for a bedroom. Too big for a closet. One large window stared at the plowed corn fields and modest ranch houses lining the street. 


A friend from church—a former professional painter named John—came over to check out our house once the ink was dry on the closing papers.

“We definitely have to change the color in here,” I admitted as I stepped into the small brown room, John and Adam following suit. John’s lined face turned toward the white popcorn ceiling. His eyes moved from wall to wall. 

“Well, if you’re gonna be in here a lot, then you better paint it something that makes you happy,” he offered in his gravel voice. John drops wisdom the way people drop pennies. 

His advice is why I picked out meringue yellow to cover up the dull brown. I wanted sunshine and bright and open. 

I wanted happy. 

And happy is how I felt when Adam showed me the freshly-painted walls. From that day on, we’ve slowly put the room together, piece by piece:

White book shelves lined with colorful book spines.
A wooden sparrow figurine. 
A white office chair threaded with thin, silver threads—a Christmas gift from my parents. 
A cream knit rug woven with a magenta diamond pattern. I got it on clearance at TJ Maxx. 
Each item further transformed the room from a forgotten, brown space….to my dream writing office. 

The night we moved into the new house, Adam and I laid on the wooden floor in the living room and closed our eyes. For the first time, it sunk in that we were officially homeowners. The rooms held strangers’ memories and smelled like other people, but soon, the signs would fade.

The scents of my cinnamon french toast and Adam’s ocean-scented shampoo and thick Vanilla Bean candles from Bath & Body Works would waft through the hallway and up the stairs. 
Our first Christmas tree, tall and chubby and pokey, would glimmer in the front window. 
Our dancing steps would cover the hardwood floors in the kitchen.
Our new chocolate lab puppy would make messes and tippy-tap with her paws and run in the back yard.
Soon, it wouldn’t be some other people’s former house. It would be our current home. 
We’d leave our mark here.
Ours. 

On March 3, we closed on our house…which means it’s soon our one-year “homeowner-iversary.” It’s been an adventure. It’s been a learning experience. 
​
Today, I walk into my office. I sit on the chair behind the desk and stare at the yellow walls. I breathe in the air and smile. Because it smells like home. 

It’s January 8. The second week of the new year. 
 
Where has the time gone? 
 
Many places, the clock on the wall whispers. It breathes with a steady tick, tick, tick. That sound….A constant reminder of how precious every second is. How nothing is the same and everything can change in an instant.
 
Tick, tick, tick. 
 
Where has the time gone?
 
It stopped at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night in March of 2017. Kelly called me. She asked if I was sitting down. Then she said the word I didn’t want to hear….never expected to hear. 
 
Cancer.
 
Time stopped that night. It stayed frozen as I sat on the bedroom floor with the phone to my ear and my head in my hands.
 
Time stopped. 
 
But then it started again. Because time waits for no one. 
 
Where did the time go? I repeated.
 
Many places, the clock echoed.
 
Time passed in the hospital. The numerous times Kelly walked through the doors of U of M hospital in Ann Arbor to treat her aggressive multiple myeloma that lived in her bones.
 
But it was just me with her that memorable Wednesday afternoon. Kel’s routine check-up ended with an ER visit. The hospital security guard printed my picture for an ID to clip onto my coat while Kelly waited to be admitted. 
 
“I’ll just need you to look into the lens right here so we can get your photo,” the guard directed me, pointing at the small black digital camera on the front desk. 
 
I shifted my feet. I didn’t know if I should smile or not. A surprise trip to the ER wasn’t exactly A smile-worthy situation.
 
“Here you go,” the guard said. He handed me the small ID card. The silver clip gleamed. 
 
I peered at the grainy photo. The black ink dots blended together. I could barely see my half-smile with no teeth. 
 
I rolled my lifelong friend to the ER room in the corner of a long hallway, right next to the bathrooms. We waited. She shared her dry chicken from the cafeteria with me. We laughed until we cried when I fell off of her bed right onto the white linoleum. We did our best to forget that we were in a hospital. It worked. For the most part.
 
Between the rotating questions from doctors wearing gray scrubs that looked comfortable and white coats that looked important, we watched “My 600 Pound Life” on the old TV from the ceiling and took pictures using the devil and angel filter on SnapChat. We waited. We got the verdict that her dizziness was related to vertigo, and that we could go home. We returned, forever changed. Closer than ever.
 
Where did the time go?
 
We folded seconds between thin, paper hospital gowns. 
We stamped moments in our memories as we swapped text messages of dopey-looking basset hounds.
We cupped minutes in our palms as we stood in the doorway of a clothing boutique in Bay City a month before her transplant. We watched the rain splatter across the pavement, then counted to three. We shrieked and held hands as we ran to my car across the street. 
 
Where did the time go? 
Time shifted. Sometimes, hours felt like seconds. 
Other times, days felt like years.
 
Time sat with her in beige chairs. Lingered in chemo bags. Stabbed with sharp needles. 
It mixed with the hospital’s stale air, her ginger ale’s bubbles, the notes of an Ed Sheeran song as we drove home from Ann Arbor. 
Curled up alongside her dark hair scattered across the salon’s wooden floor. Her curls looked like commas. As if they were saying, “This isn’t the end of your story. This is just a pause in the sentence.” 
 
Time marched along. From early spring mornings to hot summer days to golden fall nights. It followed us as we walked with our pockets packed with worries and jokes. To the chemo. And the transplant. 
 
Time stopped again when Kelly called me. I had just pulled in my driveway from work. The sky was a ceiling of gray. Our new Michigan normal. The summer sun had traded places with the early winter clouds a long time ago. 
 
“Are you sitting down?” she asked. 
 
“Yes, but I’m nervous…the last time you called and asked if I was sitting down, you told me the doctors think you have cancer.” 
 
She chuckled lightly. “I’m going to send you something, okay?” 
 
“Okay…” I held my breath. 
 
My phone chirped with a text message. I pulled the phone from my ear and looked at the  screenshot she sent me. It was an email from her doctor.
 
“Pretty fantastic results. These labs show complete remission.”
 
My shrieks and sobs started as I soon as held the phone back up to my ear. My heart felt light and heavy at the same time. 
 
“You’re in remission?” I croaked. 
 
“I am,” she said in a small, grateful voice. A hint of disbelief. The day we had waited-hoped-prayed for had finally arrived.
 
“You DID it,” I marveled at the magnitude of what this meant. “YOU DID IT! You’re in REMISSION.” Adrenaline filled my veins now as realization dawned on me. Her bones were cancer-free. She was healthy again. 
 
“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. 
 
“I’m so proud of you,” I whispered back. And I am. I always will be. 
 
For Kelly, each continuous chemo-like pill represents another day and more time.  And though there is currently no cure for multiple myeloma, someday there will be. Maybe it will take a day. A month. A year. But until then, we have time.
 
 
So where did the time go in 2017?
 
The time went to spaghetti dinners, and girls’ nights in the sunroom. 
The time went to kind cards and scarves and messages of encouragement. 
The time went to the day I saw her for the first time after her transplant. She had a scarf on her scalp, but her smile was wide. I hugged her in the kitchen and sobbed as soon as I wrapped my arms around her. My voice cracked as I said, “You’re here. It’s you. You look so good. You look SO GOOD.”
 
 
In 2017, the time went toward finding joy in the little things. 
The time went toward praying.
The time went toward battling and growing and loving and surviving. 
The time went toward healing.
And breadsticks. Lots of Olive Garden breadsticks.
 
 
2018, what do you have for us? I wonder.
 
I glance down at the bracelet on my wrist. Gingerly touch the red and green and blue beads on one side, then brush my fingers against the pure white beads on the other side. A silver charm gleams in the middle, connecting the white with the color. STRONG IS BEAUTIFUL, the charm reads in bold, black letters. I bought the bracelet when dear friends and community members and colleagues and supporters hosted and attended a spaghetti dinner in Kelly’s honor. The tough times are tough. But there’s so much beauty and joy in the tribe that surrounds you.
 
I twirl the bracelet beads and think, I know what 2018 has for us. Hopefully a lot of it:
 
Time. 
 
Time to make plans.
To laugh.
To love.
To appreciate.
To live.
 
Let us not waste a single moment.
 

​****Since sharing my blog post this spring about my more-sister-than-friend Kelly and her cancer diagnosis, many generous and kind hearts have reached out to ask about Kelly’s well-being and her next steps. To make the information-sharing process a little bit easier, and gather as many positive thoughts and prayers as we can, here is the latest update on Kelly, posted with her permission. Thoughts and prayers are appreciated for Kelly and her family this week, and these next coming weeks, as her body begins the delicate, deliberate, and debilitating healing process.***
 
 
She told me she was getting chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant this week. So I brought her breadsticks from Olive Garden.
 
It was the Sunday before the infamous First Week of School. Last year at this time, Kelly was gearing up for the chaotic first day like every other teacher.
 
But not this year.
No, this year, while students crack open fresh boxes of Crayola crayons and squeak their new tennis shoes across the school’s tiled linoleum floors, Kelly will be absent from the special ed classroom.
 
Instead, she will be in a hospital room in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  
Again.
A place she’s spent countless hours in, week after week, for the past five months. 
 
But this trip is different. Kelly won’t return right away after this trip. But maybe she’s never completely returned from any of the trips to Ann Arbor. She leaves pieces of herself in that hospital every time she visits: vials of blood, strands of hair, salty tears. 
 
Still…After many long trips and exhausting appointments, the day we’ve anxiously awaited since she received the multiple myeloma diagnosis in March is now here.
 
At 31 years young, Kelly will walk into the hospital this Wednesday, August 30.
She will sit in a beige chair.
She will get hooked up to a cocktail of chemotherapy so poignant, the concoction is comparable to the makeup of mustard gas used in World War II.
She will allow the chemotherapy to invade her body and bully her blood cells. Harassment that leads to healing. 
 
Kelly and her husband Shane discussed the details with me over Olive Garden takeout bags I unloaded on their round kitchen table. To us, OG is literal…the Original Gangster of Comfort Food…in more ways than one. My mom and I brought Olive Garden to the hospital when Kelly’s dad was diagnosed with leukemia in 2007. I brought the warm, drippy, carb-happy, noodle-heavy food containers again when Kelly initially got diagnosed this spring. Olive Garden is now strangely synonymous with solution.
 
When life is crap, my subconscious screams, “Buy the breadsticks!”
 
“I thought the chemo would be yellow, since, you know, mustard gas, but the chemo is blue,” Kelly explained as she sat across from me at the table, chewing the marinara-soaked lasagna from her Tour of Italy meal. After months of witnessing Kelly’s waning appetite, I exhaled relief when she ordered the menu’s tempting trifecta: fettuccine alfredo, chicken parmesan and lasagna. “The nurse told me, ‘Don’t worry, the blue chemo won’t turn you into a smurf….’ Har, har, har.”
 
Kelly rolled her eyes and she expelled a sarcastic fake laugh. The nurse’s corny pun coaxed matching smirks out of our mouths, pushing its way around bites of salad. She sipped her water—filtered and room temperature—out of a glass. She’s never liked cold water, but now the temperature is especially daunting to her especially sensitive teeth.
 
Our dinner seesawed between blissfully average and overwhelmingly abnormal. One minute, the three of us were discussing how to prevent pet pee stains that linger within the carpet (“That stuff will stain a ring in the WOOD underneath the carpet!” Shane huffed with passion.“It happened to a buddy of mine.” ) The next minute, Kelly is tugging her loose-fitting gray shirt to the side to show me her implantation port.
 
“These are called lumens,” Kelly pointed as she looked down at the flesh near the right of her collarbone. 
“LOO-Mens?” I repeated like one of her students. 
“Lumens, yes,” Kelly nodded.
“It sounds like something out of Harry Potter.” I stared at the three small tubes that dangled out of her pale, bruised skin like small Christmas lights.
 
“They are hooked up to a tube inside me that goes up my neck”—her index finger softly traced a path across her throat—“and down my chest, directly into my heart.” She held her finger there. I imagined her heart beating, steady like a clock.
 
“The lumens help so she doesn’t have to keep getting poked all the time,” Shane added. “Less bruising that way.” The tubes hung lifeless and guilty, intentionally avoiding contact. They knew we didn’t really want to need them. 
 
Since Day 1, Shane has soaked in the information on his wife’s disease like a sponge. Caring for her, making her mugs of the warm tea that she loves, keeping others informed while he works long hours to provide for his family.
 
In his mind, though, he’s never doing enough. We all feel that way. Cancer is crippling in its masterful ways. A true magician, it plays mind tricks to make loved ones feel powerless. You do what you can to feel like you’re doing something. Anything. 
 
Hence the Olive Garden breadsticks. 
 
“Are you taking another one?” Kelly turned and mockingly accused her husband as he reached for a garlic butter-soaked breadstick innocently lying in its aluminum-wrapped bed.
 
“I’ve only had two!” he countered. Our laughs bounced around the room.
 
I turned to my left and took in the impressive gallery wall of farmhouse signs and décor clinging to the kitchen’s back wall: 
An oversized antique spoon and fork. 
Distressed gray letters spelling out the word E A T. 
A large metal envelope. 
 
“Shane hung them all,” Kelly’s eyes stared at the gallery wall signs and nodded proudly. She smiled at her husband.“It’s all even and measured.”
 
Shane glowed with pride. He took another bite of his Five Cheese Ziti. On the counter across from me, a glass jar filled with flat brown coffee beans held a balloon in the shape of a monkey. A conversation bubble hovered over the monkey’s head, encouraging us to “Go Bananas!” 
 
“The doctors call Wednesday, which is chemotherapy day, Day 1, but then they call Thursday—stem cell transplant day—Day Zero,” Kelly continued. “Don’t ask me why they do that, though. I’m not sure.” Throughout this whole process, she’s never shied away from talking about the tough stuff. She is anything but an avoider. It’s one of the things I admire most about Kelly.
 
She sighed, then continued. “But basically, they are bringing me as close to death as possible without actually killing me. All my counts…red blood cells, white blood cells…they’ll all be down to nothing. It’s like I’ll have a new birthday.”
 
I speared my salad with the black plastic utensil forks. Crunched on my croutons. Took a sip of the bottled water. Even now, months later, I still have a hard time accepting that this scenario is reality. 
 
“So it’s like you’re starting over,” I said, swallowing. “Like restarting a computer, I guess.”
 
“Pretty much, yeah,” Kelly agreed. “That’s why I can’t really have visitors right away. My immune system will be so weak.”
 
She stood up. “I need to go put a load of laundry in.”
 
Shane and I sat in silence for a moment. “She will need to get immunizations like a newborn baby,” he added gingerly. 
 
I nodded, trying to swallow the frustration that clogged my throat. Right there and then, I wanted to return Kelly’s cancer to wherever it came from, like an unread library book banished to the bottom of a bin with a quick flip of a handle. Easily. Harmlessly. Quickly. Like it was never a part of your life to begin with. 
 
But cancer is a decorated, nail-polished, bedazzled, neon orange elephant in the room.  Even though we acknowledge the elephant as it trumpets around, that still doesn’t mean we want this beast joining us for dinner, grabbing our coveted breadsticks with its trunk. 
 
Kelly returned to the table. She offered me blueberry crumble cake.
 
“Mom made it,” she smiled, saying the three magic words. She knows I’m a big fan of her mother’s baking. Especially the oatmeal cookies. Kathy chocks them full of raisins. Three types of raisins, ‘cause Kathy doesn’t mess around. A trait her daughter inherited.
 
Over square slices of cake and scoops of vanilla bean ice cream, we ate dessert.
Kelly’s ice cream melted into the edge of her cake. The spoon clinked against the plate. She narrowed her eyes.
 
“I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow over at Shelby’s salon,” she told me. “At 6:30. Mom and Dad want me to get a ‘cutie pixie,’ but I kind of want to buzz it all. I don’t want to see my hair fall out into chunks.”
 
My eyes gravitated towards her dark brown waves pulled back into a ponytail. Threads of rainbow—purple, pink, blues—peeked through the brunette strands. The colors were the latest look courtesy of our friend Shelby’s hair expertise. “If I’m going to lose it anyway, I might as well do something fun,” Kelly reasoned. Her rainbow hair looked positively unicorn. Rebellious. Beautiful. 
 
“How short do you think you’ll go?” I now asked.
 
Next to me, Shane slipped off his ball cap. He pointed to his buzzcut wordlessly, the hair more fuzz than hair. 
 
“Like that,” Kelly pointed to her husband’s head. 
 
The abrupt shortness of the hairstyle caught me off guard. Like the lumens imbedded in her chest, this haircut—this buzzcut— would be another visual representation of the cancer clogging Kelly’s body. 
 
“What do the chunks of hair falling out represent to you that you want to avoid?” I asked.
 
“I just think it would be hard to see my hair on the pillow.” She crinkled her eyebrows thoughtfully. “And in a way, I guess, to feel a sense of control.”
 
I nodded. It made sense.
 
Kelly’s gaze shifted to the sliding glass door. In the corner of the yard, a batch of yellow Black-eyed Susan flowers swayed in the summer breeze. Fall is knocking on our door. The leaves are already blushing from the evening cold. 
 
“Daddy said to say goodbye to my flowers before I leave,” she said wistfully. “Because they’ll be dead when I come home.” 
 
Following the chemotherapy and transplant, the hospital will immediately admit Kelly to a room. After weeks of monitoring and tests, she will return home to receive constant and crucial care from her family. The chemo’s bullying side effects that will impact Kelly—mouth sores, loss of appetite, bleeding, hair loss—is a long list, all documented in black ink on a white handout from the hospital. 
 
We threw away our empty takeout containers. I grabbed my leftovers, placed them back into the brown Olive Garden bag, took the bag by the handle and headed to the back door. Photos of Kelly and Shane smiled behind the picture frames’ glass as I turned to face them standing in front of me. 
 
Shane wrapped me in a goodbye hug, then Kelly. Arms around the back, not one of those flimsy one-armed side hugs. Hugs like these are given out freely and generously within our crew these days. Like our arms will keep our feet planted on the ground, if only to keep us all from floating away.
 
“Love you,” I whispered in Kelly’s ear.
“Love you, too.” She squeezed me tighter. 
 
My car had clung to the garlic-butter smell of breadsticks. The smell wafted to my nostrils as I climbed into the driver seat. 
 
It still feels like a punch in the gut to face the facts of this situation, this diagnosis, this reality. But no one said the facts are always beautiful. No one said the facts have to be easy, or smooth. Facts are often rugged, and bruised, and gnarled. They’re the seasoned boxers that won’t back down in the ring.  Round after round, the facts remain.
 
But so do we.
 
 

My tennis shoes squeaked like a wheel that needed grease. I glanced down at my feet framed by hardwood. The hot pink laces stood out amongst the shoe’s black material.

These sneakers require some oil, I thought. Or fuel. Or flames. 
Or bananas. Mario Kart-style. 
Something slick and slippery. Hot and bothered. 
Anything to turn up the heat and make me kick it up a notch. 

With the winter winds waltzing outside, I needed a little spring in my step. I needed to run, to move my legs, to put one step in front of the other even though I was running on empty.

I waited in my living room. 

Sure enough, my guilty conscience arrived. It always shows up during my down time. Oprah beckoned from beyond the television screen. “I eat bread!” she exclaimed, raising her hands in carb-loaded victory. “I love bread!” The couch’s arms released me. I grabbed my car keys off the kitchen counter.

Now I stood still, facing the track in my sneakered, sweatpanted, ponytailed glory. The gym was packed with people, their invisible hopes stacked tall like poker chips. People were betting on themselves this year. 

With each person that walked into the gym lobby, I pictured thought bubbles popping up with promises above every head: 
2017 will be different. 
New year.
New you. 

The smell of willpower lingered in the air with the disinfectant used to clean the elliptical machines. Sports announcers recapped a football play on the television screen hanging in the corner. Basketballs bounced on the court while jeers and cheers from the players echoed in the linoleum-lined hallways. 

I inhaled, exhaled, and stepped on the track. My iPod ear buds pulsed with music as I tried to align my steps with the beat. I mean, I like running. I do. But some days I like it more than others. On this day, running was lower on the list of enjoyable things to do.

Just focus on the song, I thought. Get through the workout so you can put a check in the to-do box. 

As I ran, my movements were canned and repetitive. Robotic. My black patterned pants stretched, but they felt like metal. 
I was a Tin-Man. 
Clunky and clanging. 
Heavy-footed. 
Lacking heart. 
But hey. I was here. 

Suddenly, I felt someone brush past me. I turned my head. She was a mop of dark curls swept up in a high ponytail. Black leggings. A shirt that read “Girls Rule.” She pitter-pattered on the edge of the track, her little legs moving a mile a minute.

No taller than my knee caps, the girl continued around the track. Her mouth stretched from ear to ear as she ran, revealing a grin so wide and pure and downright adorable that I couldn’t help but feel my own lips stretch over my teeth. I continued clip-clopping around the circle, intrigued by the Little Runner that Could.

A blonde woman with a bob cut jogged ahead. She smiled a mother’s smile as the girl ran past her, looking back at the woman’s face with eyes that screamed, “Look at me!” I’m running!” The woman nodded and smiled in response. There was no sense of pressure or expectation from the mom. She wasn’t trying to turn her daughter into the next female Usain Bolt. She simply looked happy that her daughter looked happy.

I continued along, assuming the little girl would stop after a lap. But she kept running. And running. And running. Fast. 

I was in awe of this energizer bunny. I slowed my jog to a walk, mesmerized by the little girl’s abilities. 
Wait. 
No. 
It wasn’t her ability that mesmerized me. Her speed —though impressive—didn’t completely captivate me. It drew me in at first, sure. But I’ve seen a lot of fast on this track and in gymnasiums. I’ve seen talent. I’ve seen skill. I’ve seen competition and anxious and relief and willpower. 

But this little girl? This girl had happiness. And It was her genuine happy that felt unique. It was her joy that inspired my intrigue. You don’t see a ton of open-faced, unapologetic, old-fashioned, pure enjoyment these days. 

I mean, there’s glimpses and shades of happy mixed with other emotions or fears. Expectations by society, from parents, within ourselves, cloud and confuse us. They make us forget why we started what we started in the first place. 

But this girl in the black leggings and the dark hair and the big grin had 100% HAPPY splayed all over her face for the whole world to see while she ran around this track. It radiated off of her like water rising and returning to the clouds on a hot summer day. Watching this girl run, I wished for a mason jar so I could capture the excess joy beams flashing like fireflies behind her footsteps. 

The mom paused by the track entryway and said to her daughter whizzing past, “Honey, you can go around one more time, yes.” And so she did. 

“She just doesn’t quit!” I couldn’t help but remark to the mom as I walked by, exchanging eye contact and a smile.

“Right?!” The mom laughed, her eyes wide in that “I don’t get it either” way. “She just loves it so much.”

“How old is she?” I asked.

“Four.” We both turned to look at her daughter, now halfway around the track. “She loves to come here. She’ll ask me, ‘Can we go running today?’ My husband said to me the other day, ‘Is this normal? I don’t think this is normal. I think she may be really fast’.” 

“Definitely,” I nodded. “She’s amazing. I want her energy.” 

“Thanks,” she smiled. I walked on. 

“God gave her a gift to run,” I told my husband later that night. “Like, she just kept going. For no reason. I swear we are going to hear about her winning the Olympics in 20 years.”

She’s a 4-year-old girl. She doesn’t run to lose weight or because the guilt monster is snarling from the inner corners of her conscience. She isn’t running to be the fastest or prove something to someone.
 
She runs because she likes it. End of story. 

I think about the activities that have brought me happiness in my life: Dance. Volleyball. Writing. I started each of them during different times in my life because I enjoyed them. And at one point or another, each of the activities have gotten tangled up in the wicked webs of fear and doubt and all of the other junk that simply serves as distraction from the fact that I started doing them because I liked it. I had to fight back against the web and go back to the beginning of why I started. I think we all have to do that a time or two. Or four. Or more.

When was the last time you did something you loved because you enjoyed it? Not for praise or prizes. Not for affirmation or inclusion. Not to meet expectations or calm fears. Just straight up love for whatever it is: Making music. Art. Movies. Hunting. Hockey. Baking. Running. 

Fear and competition can be healthy. But not when it erases the enjoyment from whatever you are doing. Do things because you love them, and try hard not to forget why you started in the first place.

Don't forget to take the happy with you.

On December 31, 2015, I launched this blog site. 
One year ago. 
365 days. 
On this exact date. With a different year.
December 31. 
12/31/2015.
Today is December 31, 2016. Since I launched this website, 365 days have passed. Then and Now. So much has happened in between the nostalgic Then and the constantly moving Now. 

One thing hasn’t changed, though.
It hasn’t changed within the past year. 
It hasn’t changed since I went from Ms. to Mrs. 
It hasn’t changed since I was a college student studying communication and writing papers about identity and breakups, drinking chai teas and pulling all nighters. 
It hasn’t changed since I was a high school student wearing red and black and shouting “Go Bulldogs!” and wearing nighttime headgear (heck yeah, awkward orthodontia) and feeling all of the feels about everything and anything. Sopping up the soapy, dripping emotions like a thick sponge. 
It hasn’t changed since I was a girl on an elementary school playground wearing Keds and a side ponytail, all innocence and fairytales and SuperMario Bros and dandelion crowns and library trips. 
Despite it all. All of the changes. All of the hurdles. All of the questions and the doubts and the seasons. Despite it all…my dream hasn’t changed. 

I want to be a published author. 
​
It’s this dream that inspired me to start this blog 365 days ago. I wanted to chronicle my journey —and my writings— on this site. And as I look back at this past year, I am grateful and excited for the progress made and the steps taken to get me closer to the goal:
I finished the manuscript. My first. A fiction manuscript. 
Queryed several agents, hoping they’d be interested in my manuscript.
Waited.
Got some interest. Got some rejection.
Doubted myself, then reminded myself of the dream. Kept going.
Waited. 
Signed with literary agent and all-around amazing person Renee Nyen with KT Literary. 
Received an outline of edits. Made edits. Submitted changes to Renee.
Had solid conversations with Renee because she has an epic eye. Realized I needed to make more edits.

So what’s up with the book now? you ask.

Well, the answer is short. And unglamorous. But true:
More editing. More revising. 

If I'm being honest with you,, I got too excited on my first round of edits. I focused on the breadth rather than the depth. I got so excited about moving forward that my feet went fast. Too fast. I tripped. I focused too much on the finish line instead of completing my current leg of the race.

​Lucky for me, I have an awesome agent who knows what this book can be and what I can do. And I can do better. So I’m still working on my manuscript, making edits and diving deep to ensure the next draft I turn in is the best it can be. 

I love writing. But writing… It’s hard at times. I'm hard on myself at times. I’m learning that the road to being published is long. It has potholes where your feet get stuck and your mind gets cluttered. Pools of doubt gather alongside me. 

But as I sit here on December 31, 2016, I keep thinking about this day next year, and the days that will take place between now and then. A lot of words and writing and worrying (because I’m me and I’m a worrier and that will never change) will take place in these next 365 days. 

I’ve come a long way, and I’m grateful for my friends and family who have witnessed this journey and supported me every step of the way.

But I’m not done yet. 

I’m excited for what 2017 will bring….and the goal is to sit here on December 31, 2017, with exciting news and dreams achieved. 

At the end of the day, though--regardless of the result--it’s all about the journey, right?

Happy New Year. Here's to 2017.

xo,

Lindsay

I didn't want to go into work today.

It's not that I don't like my job. I do. I work at a church. My co-workers are like a second family to me.
 
But I didn't want to go into work today.
 
I was grumpy. I wanted to sit on the couch and feel sorry for myself because I didn't fold the laundry and I was snippy to my husband and I was tired of fighting the critical self-talk in my head because sometimes it's easier to just give in to it rather than attempt positive affirmations.
 
Positive affirmations take a lot of energy. Energy that I did not have this morning.
 
Plus, it's a Friday. A beautiful fall Friday. After days of rain and clouds and wind here in Michigan, the sun finally decided to peek out and show its sparkly self to the world. Like a soloist tap dancer dressed in sequins, the sun is all, "I'll give 'em the ole razzle dazzle."
 
Thus, I wanted to take my time and sink in my grumpiness and sip a mug of hot apple cider and gaze out at the window at the oak trees basking in the sunshine.
 
Now that it's October, the trees are trading in their green wardrobes for cloaks of reds, magentas, yellows. If the sun is a sparkly soloist on stage, the oak trees are the audience members dressing up for the occasion. They're putting on their autumn best to take in the sunshiney show.
 
And yet the reality is: the trees are dying.
 
They give us their all--one last hurrah in a burst of fall foliage-- and go out in style. Their leaves scatter like confetti until we deem them yard waste: no longer brilliant in bursts of color, but browned and unattached and cluttering our manicured lawns.
 
We love the leaves when they're tall and together and beautiful, but discard them when they've fallen. Just like we do with people sometimes. Unfortunately.   
 
Trees let things go so easily. When the signs of summer begin to fade, they don't fight it. They embrace the change by changing, too. When one tree morphs in a fit of speed and color and marigold yellow, another tree won't shrink at it's neighbor's brilliance. It stands tall, transforming from dark green to deep burgundy on its own terms.
 
Trees don't compare. They don't copy. Trees take their time turning and changing into what God intended them to be. They are their brightest before they fade.
 
I need to take a page out of the oak tree's book, I decided as I gazed out the window.
I wanted to stay here in front of this window and learn more life lessons from the oak trees and feel sorry for myself. As you do.
 
But (sigh) I got over myself and got up and got dressed and got in the office. And then I got a reminder about life and grief and lonely instead of, you know, laundry and snippy and couch potato.
 
Life loves to interfere with my pity parties.
 
Here's the thing: When you work at a church, you get to blur the lines. People trump process. Feelings override to-do lists. We witness many life-defining moments. We watch in real-time as memories are being made:
Baptisms.
Messages that introduce people to faith and God.
Weddings.
Funerals.
 
On Tuesday--just three days ago--we hosted a funeral for a kind woman with a big heart and unwavering faith.

She attended a weekly class here at the church on Tuesday mornings. On those class days when I would walk in to the church, this woman was often the first face I saw. Sitting at a round oak table, she'd smile and greet me with a "Hi, Lindsay!" Her voice was excited and warm, like she was genuinely happy to see me. And that made me feel valued. Acknowledged. I loved walking in and seeing her face.
 
Sometimes, all it takes is a genuine hello to make someone's day. Her hello did for me, anyway.
 
This woman's funeral was honoring and memorable and personal. People sat in pews and said their prayers. A photo board displayed images of her life before most of us knew her. A younger version of her and her husband smiled in photos wearing clothes we now deem vintage but are still viewed as classy.
 
Memories. Moments. People. Staring back at us in sepia tones.
 
This morning, I sat at my desk in the front as I always do. The office was quiet, as most of the staff gone to meetings or appointments or final fall vacations before winter settles in for the next six months.
 
Then, the woman's husband came in to the office.
 
He is a dedicated man who sends out prayer requests and serves as a church elder and sat by his wife's side until her days on this earth ended. If this had been a Tuesday several months ago, he would have been sitting next to his wife at round table when I walked in to work.
 
Today, he stood in the doorway alone.
 
"Hi!" I greeted, surprised to see him and unsure what to say to someone who said goodbye to his wife a week ago to the day.
 
"Hello." He took a step closer and held out an envelope to me. "For the funeral."
 
He wore a burgundy polo that matched the oak tree leaves. His slacks looked a size too big. He probably lost weight from the stress, I thought. His white hair peppered and streaked with gray was combed like always, but still...he looked different.
 
We chatted about how his email wasn't working.
 
"I need to call Charter," he said. "I don't understand it. They say the password isn't right, but they're the ones who came up with it."
 
"Oh yeah, I've had a few arguments with them over the years," I admitted.
 
He nodded then looked down, his eyes focused on the floor. His face was full of sadness. The sadness wasn't splayed all over his features like a coat of cosmetics you could wipe off at the end of the day. This sadness was deeper. Engrained.
 
Like it was there to stay for the rest of his days.
Like he had lost something.
Because he had.
 
After decades of being married and taking care of his wife, her presence was gone. So here he was, three days later, left with logistics and details, envelopes and Charter communications company phone calls, and small talk with the girl sitting in the church's front office.
 
We made small talk about the weather. I took the envelope, promising to put it in it's proper place. As I watched him walk away, hiking up his too-big slacks, I stared at his back. He looked so alone.  A tug pulled at my heart.
 
"Do you want a brownie?" I called after him. One of our volunteers had made zucchini brownies. There were two left.
 
He turned.
 
"A brownie?" His voice sounded lighter. Relieved. Like he didn't want to walk away alone, either. "Well, sure, I'll take a brownie."
 
We stood across from each other in silence. Then, I acknowledged what we both were thinking. "The funeral was really beautiful."
 
Some people want to avoid talking about funerals and loss, but he grabbed onto the comment like a lifesaver.
 
"It really was," he exclaimed. "Wasn't it? The funeral home did such a good job."
 
"Yes," I agreed. "What a lovely memorial for her." He nodded.
 
"Today is the 7th," I explained. "Next month is me and my husband's 1-year anniversary. Got any advice?"
 
"Nope," he laughed. "Just keep on goin'."
 
I smiled. "Well, that's something we all can do then, isn't it?"
 
"It certainly is." He turned and walked back out into the hallway. I zipped up the plastic bag. One brownie left.
 
Like the trees, this man is entering a new season of life. He is now a widow. His face is weathered and wrinkled and deep, not unlike the bark of an old oak tree. But unlike the trees, memories of his wife and their lives won't be scattered like leaves in a gutter, only to be raked and collected in bags to burn. These memories will live on despite the changes.
 
No matter what season life throws our way, all we can do is adapt. The weather calls for change, and so they do.
Life calls for change.
And so we do.
 
We adapt. We just keep on goin'.
 
I'm glad I went to work today. 

​You’re pregnant.

All of a sudden, your world turns upside down in a right side up kind of way. A small stick with a plus sign changes your life because you are now bringing another life into the world.

Weeks go by, and you prepare. Baby showers. Baby nursery. Pastel colors of sky blues, pale pinks, sunshine yellows and mint greens. Onesies. Diapers. Monthly stickers to use when your baby is out of the womb and into the world, growing and changing and showing he has your eyes or she has his lips. One month, two months, three months, four.

When people ask, “Do you want a boy or a girl?” you respond with the same response everyone says. You mean it because it’s true: “We just want a healthy baby.”

We expect a lot when we’re expecting.

But then, the unexpected happens.

Early delivery.
Detection.
Diagnosis.
Something’s not right.

And your world is turned upside down again as you turn right towards the elevators and go up a floor to the floor you never imagined when you envisioned your birth plan: The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. NICU for short.

The image of you smiling as you walk into your home nursery—the room with the white crib and jungle theme and stuffed animal giraffe and rocking chair—are replaced with your reality: tubes and wires and beeping and ringing. Beige walls and large sinks and bracelets that identify you as the parent of the baby in Nursery 6.

You stand like a soldier on guard next to the isolette —a clear plastic box with holes for wires and tubes to weave in and out—where your baby lies, protected from the world. Your baby is fragile and small and too tiny to fit into any of the newborn onesies your family gifted you at the shower many weeks ago. But that’s okay, you tell yourself. Because this is all part of you and your baby’s journey to being okay.

You just want your baby to be okay. Please God let my baby be okay.

Your new mantra is “I just want us to go home.” Home represents health.

Your emotions are determined by your baby’s small victories that are actually huge milestones. When a baby’s original birth weight is one pound, gaining another pound is to be celebrated. The nurses hang beads outside of your baby’s isolette. “Bravery beads,” they call them. “To represent every milestone.” You stare at the beads as you cling to the hope they represent.

You focus on the victories while chasing away the fear tucked in your brain. Did I do something wrong? Could we have prevented this?

But here’s the thing: You’re not wrong. You’re not alone. The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit doctors and nurses are there. And they’ve dedicated their lives to responding to the unexpected.

They’re there: night and day. Taking care of your family. Helping to get your baby healthy. But they do so much more than that. They’re advocates for you. They represent answers and permission and reassurance. Wearing scrubs and smiles, they are the calm in the midst of a churning, turning tornado of emotional storms.

My mom, with her sweet demeanor and seal blue scrubs, has worked as a registered nurse on the NICU floor for over 30 years. When I was younger, I would wake up with her in the mornings before she left for the hospital. I’d stand on the couch in front of our large picture window and peer outside, waving goodbye in my pink onesie pajamas, wishing she could stay home with me.

I knew she was a nurse. I knew she was going to the hospital. I knew she was leaving me to go to work.
But I didn’t know what my mother did for 12 hours a day. I didn’t understand why we had to celebrate Christmas early due to Mom’s work schedule. I didn’t understand why she had to sleep during the day due to exhausting night shifts and that’s why she kept a fan on in her room and that’s why I had to try to keep my voice down.

As I got older, though, my confusion turned into clarity. Every interaction still remains a reminder to me of why my mom’s job is more than a job, and all of those early Christmases or picture window goodbyes make sense:

When Mom gets stopped at the grocery store as proud parents pull out photos of their son or daughter—once a tiny premature baby—now a healthy 6-year-old kicking a soccer ball in a snapshot, it’s clear.

When Mom approaches parents she recognizes and remembers at a restaurant because they’ve celebrated and cried and hugged together over the milestones of their baby years ago on the NICU floor, it’s clear.

When I’m at a craft show with Mom and she talks to a dad who points to his elementary-age son and says, “She took care of you when you were a baby,” and the boy smiles, it’s clear.

When she comes home in tears because a baby passed away, it’s clear. Heartbreaking....but clear.

When a friend who owns a floral shop in our hometown sends my mom flowers every Father’s Day because she was the one who told him he could hold his baby girl for the first time, it’s clear. So clear.

Being a nurse is not just a job. It’s a calling.

NICU nurses spend their own time and effort to decorate baby’s isolettes by cutting scrapbook paper into letters of babies’ names. They knit Christmas booties for the babies. They stamp every baby’s tiny toes and feet in the shape of a heart to make artwork for Father’s Day. They listen and they hug and they cry, too. NICU nurses live in the balance of thinking and feeling. Celebrating victories and shedding tears. They are there to stand by your side during one of the scariest experiences life has to offer.

Whenever I ask Mom why she’s stayed in the NICU all of these years, her answer is always the same: “I love the babies.” And she means it because it’s true.

September is Neonatal Intensive Care Unit month. As this month comes to a close, I think of the babies. The parents. The families. The doctors. The nurses. All of the faces who come together to celebrate highs, lows, and everything in between. And it all becomes clear.
​
My mother is an angel. NICU nurses are angels. They’re angels in scrubs.