Grief is a cocoon from which we emerge new. Untamed (p. 271) So what now? Where do I go from here? I could stay mad at God, I could give up on faith because it doesn’t make sense and life is generally unfair… But I just can’t. There is some small part of me that refuses to give up on faith. I experienced the same thing when I went through postpartum depression. It felt like my world was turned upside down, and nothing made sense, but there was the tiniest ember of faith inside me that just refused to be extinguished. And all can do is try to fan that flame into life again. So here are the th ..read more

Right in the middle of trying to process all of my feelings and the overwhelming sense of doubt, I was helping my church plan a women’s retreat, scheduled to take place in April. I was asked if I might consider being a speaker at the retreat, sharing a story about how God had worked in my life. Initially I said I wasn’t sure, and I briefly mentioned that I was going through a difficult time, and I didn’t think God would resolve it by the time the retreat came about. “It doesn’t need to be resolved,” the other women assured me. I told them that I was having a bit of a struggle with my faith, an ..read more

If you are following along and you have read part II, I mentioned that I had decided that I didn’t want to give up on my faith. But I was still so angry and hurt, and I didn’t really know how to move forward. Unfortunately, there was no fast forward button to emotional and spiritual healing. It was going to take time. I did a lot of personal journaling during this time. Journaling is a great way to process through your feelings, and for myself, I’ve found that it is a great way to start to heal from emotional wounds. (*The cool thing is there is actually brain science to support this!) Here’s ..read more

[ If you missed part 1, you can go back and read it here! ] It’s not like I had never questioned parts of my faith before – my faith had evolved slowly over the years, and certain events in my life had definitely made an impact on what I believed. But I had never gotten to the point where faith felt so pointless… and it scared me because I wondered, “is this the moment where I’m going to give up on God?” I grew up being so afraid of any shred of doubt (because doubt meant that you were a “bad” Christian, and also that maybe you were probably going to hell.) I’m embarrassed to say I was well in ..read more

I had been so focused on writing about and processing my infertility journey, that I realized I haven’t written much about my faith in a while. But my faith was directly impacted by infertility, and that was just one more reason that infertility was so hard. I didn’t expect a faith crisis in the middle of trying to get pregnant for three years – it hadn’t happened to me before, and it was a surprising and scary thing to also be dealing with in addition to the grief of not being able to have another child. You’ll notice I said infertility permanently affected my faith – it did not completely de ..read more

The Grammys happened a few days ago, and while I didn’t follow it super closely, I was curious to see who the winners were. Miley Cyrus won her first ever Grammy for her song, “Flowers.” (I am so unhip, I still have not actually listened to that song… but now I probably will.) This was a huge night for Miley, but you know what most people ended up focusing on? Making fun of her hairstyle. Now Miley is no stranger to unique fashion styles, and she frequently gets a lot of flack for it. But instead of changing herself to avoid criticism, she seems to lean even more into emphasizing her uniquenes ..read more

When I first decided that I wanted to train for a half marathon, I was pretty overwhelmed with all of the running schedules and advice that I found online. It seemed like there were a million “right” ways to train, but it was hard to narrow down what was actually going to work for me. Now that I’ve got one half marathon under my belt, I wanted to share what I actually did and what I found helpful. Near the beginning of my training, I talked with a seasoned runner and he told me that running a half marathon was all about “just putting in the miles” and that “anyone could do it.” I honestly kind ..read more

My husband and I just completed our very first half marathon at the Happiest Place on Earth: Disneyland! The race started at 5am – we woke up at 3am to get ready and it was about a 30 minute walk to the starting gates. We we in the last corral (the “party” group – aka. “business in front, party in the back”), so we didn’t actually start running until about 5:45am. There were SO many people crowded into a small space – we started off at a slow pace, about 13-minute miles, but that was okay (the pacer car picked up people who were slower than 16-minute miles). There were a few times we bottle-n ..read more

I read 52 books in 2023, which was an all-time record for me! I got invited to join a book club at the beginning of the year which really helped me get back into reading fiction. I didn’t write as much this year, which I guess is a natural trade off – I find that I can only truly devote myself to so many hobbies at a time. This past year I focused on exercising (training for a half marathon) and reading. Here was the breakdown of genres of books I read this year: Religious/Spiritual – 14 Fiction – 20 Nonfiction – 12 Memoir – 6 Obviously “fiction” and “nonfiction” could be parsed out more, but ..read more

I love hearing people’s stories – obviously I love sharing my own stories, but I also love learning about other people’s experiences. I’ve read a lot of memoirs this year including Michael J. Fox’s, Tom Felton’s, and Elliot Page’s – but the one that I surprisingly connected with the most was Britney’s The Woman in Me. I was an OG Britney Spears fan. I was in 7th grade when her first album came out, and …Baby One More Time was one of the first cds I remember buying. I remember trying to learn the dance to (You Drive Me) Crazy with my friend Heidi. We practiced it over and over for hours! (Did a ..read more