About Me…
Hitting the snooze button is my jam; which inevitably creates quite the morning hustle. Most days you can find me watching my favorite morning show only after rushing the kids off to school. My favorite days are when the grocery budget renews, the kids don’t have to be out the door for school, and when it’s just the right time to cut into that sweet, juicy watermelon. Since I was a little girl, I dislike eating anything that oinks or swims. I’ve spent the past 15 years teaching kids in school and church settings. My favorite teaching years have been those at home raising my babies.
Seeing the glass half full is not easy. God continues to pursue me to find the good He is doing in my life: overcoming depression, sticking with the marriage of my dreams, bouncing back from treatment-induced menopause, finding the surface in my cancer journey, and reclaiming my kids’ childhood.
After 10 years of marriage, my husband still refuses to admit his mom set us up for a blind date. The “potential friend” she suggested he pursue has been his greatest adventure.
In 2013, Tim and I vowed to cherish one another in sickness and in health. At the time we didn’t understand the weight of our promise, but we continue to trust God with our covenant to one another and our future.
If starting a family wasn’t adventurous enough, my husband and I relocated our family to West Michigan in 2016. God was calling us to leave the coveted Chicago deep dish pizza and all of our family and friends for an unfamiliar place.
Several years after relocating, I see God’s hand on all He would do through our obedience to Him: the birth of our second and third babies, life changing careers, and the impeccable medical care I wouldn’t know I needed.
You can find the five of us spending time together either camping out in our basement, testing out an amusement park, or catching a White Sox baseball game. Most days, we are keeping up with the brother on his bike and dragging the sisters out of bed.
THEN…
The Back Pain That Changed it All…
The dream of growing old changed quickly. After a year and a half of unexplained back pain that felt as intense as constant uterine contractions, I was diagnosed with Stage IV Nodular Sclerosis Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. My hubby and I taught our 7, 4, and 2 year olds a new word: cancer.
The five of us united in prayer to bring down the bad cells that aimed to take over my body.
Together we celebrated the end of a six-month treatment stretch to only discover the lymphoma hadn’t gone away. We sacrificed the holidays with our loved ones to spend “the most wonderful time of year” trying out an additional, new chemotherapy regimen.
If it couldn’t get any harder, it did.
I spent eighteen days away from my kiddos as I was hospitalized for an Autologous Stem Cell Transplant.
As cancer attempted to wreck havoc on my marriage and raising my children, I depended on God to orchestrate my health for His good purposes. In May of 2023, I celebrated remission: no evidence of disease and freedom from treatment.
Together, my family and I are rebuilding our life to point to God’s goodness regardless of the residual effects of the bad cells.
Today’s dream is embracing the gold God adds to my life everyday.
There’s gold out there. Let’s find it!