Thoughts from Mother's Day 2025

Dear Readers,

It's funny to me how every six months this blog seems to resurrect itself with something so heavy.

I suppose that is bound to happen when a singular hybrid English/Computer class homeschool assignment a month after a diagnosis turns into an open letter to whomever stumbles across it. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

This blog has brought humor, life, hope, and a healthy dose of the real and the raw to readers across the world since December 2017 and it has provided me with a unique and incredible community of friends like family that I wasn't anticipating God would end up building from what I thought was rubble of a life I'd never get to live.

I am not the same young girl I was at 16 when this whole thing called "The Journey of a Lifetime" started. But in many ways, the ways I'd argue matter most, I am the same. Funny how things work like that.

Anyways, that brings me to what I suppose you could call a trigger warning.

Below, you'll find my unfiltered thoughts from a journal entry I wrote down on Mother's Day this year.

My hope is that rather than triggering anyone, this will instead provide encouragement and a balm for your hearts the way it did for me, but all the same --- if you're not up for reading about the real and the raw of trying to conceive --- this is your sign to skip the rest of this entry.

---

May 11, 2025

Today is Mother's Day...

In college, both Mother's and Father's days were really hard because of the reality of my circumstances as an adult missionary kid no longer active in the field. Those days would come, I'd watch all my college peers and friends have wonderful days, and I'd feel awful that I didn't share that joy.

After marriage, my first Mother's Day was gut-wrenching. My husband and I were still recovering from our first negative pregnancy test from September 9, 2023, and by the time Mother's Day rolled around --- we had literally been trying to conceive for months, and our arms were still empty. We felt sad, disappointed, and I felt betrayed by my earthly but very chronically ill body.

This is my second Mother's Day.

Our arms are still empty and while most days I don't dwell on that, on others, my brain can't quite comprehend it.

However, this is Mother's Day and I'm surprisingly not as grieved. I still ache some, for children we have labored to create and that I've delivered. I ache some on behalf of my husband, who I so desperately long to bless with children that he can father and love on, in partnership with me.

But, amidst the ache, I am overjoyed.

Our "parenting" doesn't look at all the way we hoped it would by now, but God has abundantly blessed us with needs we can fill, and hearts we can provide safe havens for.

So, to all the moms out there ---

whether you are mothering children you have given birth to, children you have adopted, or children that have become yours by spiritual descent and you are mothering them through mentorship and discipleship ----

your love, poured into you by God the Father, that you pass on to your children is WORTH celebrating.

The work you do in partnership with your spouses and the Holy Spirit is sacred work. It is honorable, virtuous, and praiseworthy.

Thank you for everything.

And to my "children" ---

the ones God has blessed us with through avenues we weren't even expecting ----

mentoring you, discipling you, showing you how to live a life of apprenticeship to Jesus (and housing you, feeding you, praying for you, and loving you) is one of the great honors of my life.

I am so blessed to know that you have found a safe haven in the home my husband and I have been building.

We didn't know you would be the ones to walk across its floors first, or the ones we'd spend time thinking of, worrying for, and praying for first, but we are so glad that you are.

Your "Dad" and I love you so very much, and our home is yours for as long as you want it.