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On Sundays we set aside time for Jesus and making

On Sundays we set aside time for Jesus and making delicious things that require lots of butter. 😆

Nap time with this girl.✨ #babydonnajean

Nap time with this girl.✨ #babydonnajean

About to kick off our first weekend of summer brea

About to kick off our first weekend of summer break! 💃🏻Wyatt's official last day of kindergarten was Thursday. ☺️ This boy manages to fill the role of both the most serious and goofy six year old I know. He loves Minecraft, Fortnite, Star Wars, raising chickens, riding the GoKart and is an avid reader. He is a fun loving, obnoxious, protective big brother all wrapped up in one. He blows me away daily with the depth of his thoughts and questions and will forever be the little boy that made me a mama.
I love him fiercely and cannot, CANNOT believe he is now a 1st grader! #weewyattgraham

I make him a bologna and cheese sandwich with jala

I make him a bologna and cheese sandwich with jalapeño chips everyday.⁠
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It's become almost a meditative experience for me: spread the mayo just like so, layer the cheese, then the bologna, stack the bread on top and then a execute a clean diagonal slice through the middle of the sandwich. Pile the chips onto the plate, serve with a smile.⁠
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The first day he started working from home I made him this sandwich and was genuinely over the moon about doing so. We were all healthy. We were all safe. We were all home. It felt special, I felt grateful. Another little way to show him I love him. What more could I ask for? ⁠
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But today as I made that diagonal slice, the kind that is honestly just a little too fancy for a simple bologna sandwich, I didn't feel so over the moon about it. Isn't it strange how that happens? Why is it that our "get tos" somehow become our "have tos"? At what point does that simple perspective shift take place? ⁠
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All I know is that tomorrow I will do better to choose joy over getting the opportunity to show love to the man who is just as grateful for his 59th bologna sandwich as he was for the 1st. Whose only request for lunch in the first place is, "a bologna sandwich."

"I clutch the edge of the kitchen sink, hunched an

Happy Saturday! Hoping to make a little more head

Happy Saturday! Hoping to make a little more head way on rearranging the nursery this morning... I find myself with three hooligans — I mean helpers. 😬 I meant helpers... 🤫😉 #matriarchhandmade

There are always dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

There are always dirty dishes in the kitchen sink. ⁠
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A perpetual stream of toddlers pants or toddler shirts soaking, pretreated from some chocolate ice cream spill or chicken poop incident. ⁠
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Without fail banana bread crumbs and dried up play doh bits rest under the kitchen table. ⁠
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Work is repeatedly interrupted by the shrill screams of a toddler learning to use her voice or the incessant bickering of brothers. ⁠
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Invariably someone is crying. Inevitably someone yells.⁠
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And is anyone still homeschooling anymore, I mean reeeally...?⁠
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The time I find for words, for writing, has always been in the margins. Words scribbled here, sentences typed there. Now the margins are narrower. Really to call them margins at all is laughable at this point. Yes, I am laughing out loud at the mere prospect of there even being space for *margins* now.⁠
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And yet here I am, fighting for them anyway. Attempting to string together characters that form the words and sentences that fill mind, move my heart and stir my soul.⁠
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When I look into the crevices of our life, I find darkness and dirt and other gross bits that I am tempted to cast aside. But, often enough, as I search through the dark I find things that were once lost. Precious gems that may otherwise have been forgotten. ⁠
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I pray I'm never so proud that I cease searching for those forgotten things — the truly precious moments and meanings that the world sometimes encourages us to overlook. Might I relinquish my endless hunt for the light when there is so much to be found in the dark.

Tired eyes, unwashed hair day number...?🤷 And a

Tired eyes, unwashed hair day number...?🤷 And a bump that will likely outgrow these overalls before it's all said and done. This is #32weeks⁠⠀
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#pregnancy #babybump #thirdtrimester #thebump #babybelly

#30weeks yesterday.✨ According to most obstetric

#30weeks yesterday.✨ According to most obstetricians I’m solidly into my third trimester... According to Nick I’ve just started my fourth quarter. 🤷🏻‍♀️😆

I let her have her solid chocolate bunny thinking

I let her have her solid chocolate bunny thinking she could just gnaw on it while I did a few things in the kitchen... Next thing I know, she’s through the ears and onto the head. 😂 Girl can put away some chocolate! (Just like her mama 😆🙈)

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light” -Albus Dumbledore, J.K. Rowling

How many times have you seen a quote like this one? One that reveres the light and despises the dark? Positions the light as being full of answers and next steps but the dark as only a place of hopelessness and fear?

What if there is good IN the dark that we so readily turn away from? The same dark we relentlessly seek to destroy with the light.

Does a seed not sprout deep in the darkness of dirt?
Does life giving water not dwell far beneath the Earth’s well lit surface?
Do buds not sprout from trees that have rested bleak and lifeless all winter long?

Does life not begin in the dark pitch of a mother’s womb?

Our human condition dictates that we always seek to separate the light from dark. Marking them with divisive words like good vs. bad, joy vs. pain, etc.
But does the brightest of light not also cast the darkest of shadows? Can the deepest of shadows hope to exist without light? The two — light and dark — cannot be separate. They were never meant to be.
I am convinced that much of our own discomfort, pain, and turmoil lies in our own futile attempt to create a division between the two — the light and the dark. In seeking the light and casting out the dark we succeed only in diminishing the abundance the two have to offer, together.
I am a self-proclaimed light junkie, I know what it is to chase the light. But I also know what it is to stare into the darkness. To be faced with that darkness for so long that you stop trying to escape it and instead, begin to explore it. There is good found in the dark too. There is truth found in the dark too. Not alongside, not adjacent, nor in spite of, but within. Deep within.

Day 27 of Forty Days of Writing the Everyday (work

Day 27 of Forty Days of Writing the Everyday (workshop by @exhale.creativity and @calliefeyen) and I have successfully completed, wait for it, ONE day. One day! 😩⁠⠀
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I want to be a writer. I AM a writer. I want to write something meaningful. Something that resonates. I want to write a book! Why have I then avoided writing 26 out of the last 27 days? Why have I avoided writing the better half of this last year? I don't know, I don't know...⁠⠀
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But I'm not going to use anymore time trying to figure out the answer to that question BEFORE I sit down and write. Today I flex my writing muscles. "Practice my scales." And if there is an answer to my question I will find it as I go. Not as I sit, but as I go. ⁠⠀
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#exhalecowork #exhalecreativity #coffeecrumbscreativity #amwriting #writersofinstagram #writer #writersofig #writerscommunity #writingcommunity #writingprompts #writingmotivation #writinginspiration

I can’t remember the last time I wore Wyatt in t

I can’t remember the last time I wore Wyatt in the baby carrier or wrap. I can’t remember the last time Thurser fell asleep in my arms. I savored the moments. The ones they tell you to, the ones that slip away. I would even dare say I savored them more than most. But here we are again, these days are numbered. I have thrived watching her thrive. Watching her limbs grow beyond the neat confines of my arms. Feeling her weight grow heavier against my chest. Our days are numbered and the taste is just as bittersweet.

And just like that, #21weeks. All went well with

And just like that, #21weeks.
All went well with the 20 week ultrasound (🎉) but I held off on announcing thinking I could come up with some fun way to announce the sex of our last little family member. Then I was like, who am I kidding? This is baby number FOUR, folks. Ain’t nobody got time for that.🤷🏻‍♀️😆 It’s a BOY my friends. A baby boy!

DONNA UPDATE: We got some pretty great news last

DONNA UPDATE:
We got some pretty great news last week... Donna’s bloodwork shows that she’s headed in the right direction! Her blood count is up, indicating we are resolving her B12 deficiency anemia. She’s continuing to gain and grow like a champ (now at the 16th percentile, up from the 3rd that she plummeted to). We will continue all the meds and supplements she’s on now, do repeat bloodwork in a few weeks and then re-assess.
A round of applause for the 17 month old that has had so many blood draws now I’ve lost count, please!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Donna's

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of Donna's open heart surgery. To put it simply, I have felt all the feels. ⁠⠀
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The last two months have been a wild ride. At the beginning of November we learned that Donna had not only stopped gaining weight, but was losing weight -- rapidly. She had dropped almost a whole pound since mid September. ⁠⠀
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A slew of tests, procedures and doctor visits ensued. But by the end of the month, she was down yet another pound. My already peanut-sized girl, who was barely pushing the 20th percentile, was plummeting off the charts. I could hear the troubling tone in the doctor's voice the day we left her clinic to embark on more tests, more procedures. The day the word 'NG tube' was mentioned again. One year removed -- to the day -- from the last time we left the hospital with an NG tube.⁠⠀
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It felt impossible not to be scared. It felt impossible to not think that we were headed into surgery again. I had just lived this. Had I not? Again I desperately prayed that I wasn't watching my daughter wither away...⁠⠀
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(Continued in comments)⠀

Santa Claus! 🎅🏻

Santa Claus! 🎅🏻

BABY NUMBER 4 COMING JULY 2020! 😱 Prophecy is

BABY NUMBER 4 COMING JULY 2020! 😱

Prophecy is not a word that occurs in common conversation. It almost exclusively belongs in the Old Testament, right? But as I look at this little doodle I made shortly after Nick and I were engaged (over 10 years ago) my eyes narrow a bit and head tilts ever so slightly to the side. I feel the hairs on my arms prickle and a tingle run up the back of my spine... Is that not our house? The old farmhouse with the fence out front? The barn to the right with a second drive? The garden planted directly out back? Over looking the field of crops? Surrounded by big old trees?
The likeness is uncanny.

As each of our children were born this little doodle would come to mind. This silly little doodle that somehow stuck around all these years. And as we neared making the decision that we were done growing our family, I again thought of this ridiculous doodle. Why did it challenge me so?

I’m gonna be honest, it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions since we found out baby number four is on the way. But when I look at this drawing? The word that permeates my mind is: prophecy. The Lord reminds me during this time of unknown and uncertainty, that while I don’t know, he does. That while I am uncertain, he is.
And always has been.
I feel immense joy and peace in knowing that this is not just a plan some younger version of myself devised for our family, but that this is God‘s plan for our family. And holy crap FOUR KIDS.

So! Who’s ready to weigh in? Is it going to be a girl or a boy?! My money’s on the prophecy. 😉

A little over a year ago now, I put down the book

A little over a year ago now, I put down the book I was reading. This book.
It’s become symbolic really... Because with it I also somehow put down a host of other things: my mental health, my physical health, my words, my writing, my art and — most importantly— my call to share our story, as it’s happening. Raw and real and unedited. “Good here too.” These are the words that have echoed in my mind, thundered in my heart and the ones I’ve felt on the tip of my tongue for quite some time now. Far before I both picked up and put down this book. “Good here too.” These are the words that grow wilder and stronger with each passing day that I keep them locked inside. Because it’s easier, safer, neater for me to avoid them than attempt to do them justice.
A little over a year ago now, I put down the book I was reading. This book.

But on the day that I picked it back up, as the sun cracked open the morning sky, I read: “I drive out of dark and into morning glory.
I awaken to the strange truth that all new light comes out of the dark places, and hasn’t it always been? Out of darkness, God spoke forth teeming life. That wheat round and ripe across all these fields, they swell as hope embryos of the black earth. Out of the dark, tender life unfurled. Out of my own inner pitch, six human beings emerged, new life, wet and fresh.
All new life labors out of the very bowels of darkness.
That fullest life itself dawns from nothing but Calvary darkness and tomb cave black into the radiance of Easter morning.
Out of the darkness of the cross, the world transfigures into new life. And there is no other way.” (One Thousand Gifts, Ann Voskamp)

Would you believe me if I told you that those words were waiting for me? Tucked easily, safely and neatly alongside the bookmark that sat untouched for hundreds of days. Words just for me. Light I found while in the dark, that spoke straight into me in an absolutely, undeniably, God given way. Truth that enumerates my own “good here too.” That compels me to stand up, clear my throat and breathlessly state another truth that God has placed on my heart for so, so very long: **CONTINUED IN COMMENTS**

She started on the blanket. Would you look at her

She started on the blanket. Would you look at her go?! Cue Google search for: how to get grass stains out of a baby’s sleeper.

This girl... The girl who had her clavicle broken during birth. The girl who has had her chest cracked open to reconstruct her complex heart anatomy. The girl who goes about her day coping with severe mitral valve stenosis — despite having a reconstructed heart. The girl who still faces future reconstructive heart surgeries. The girl who has two left patterned lungs. The girl who has a stomach, colon and liver on the opposite sides of her body. The girl with malrotated intestines. The girl with two spleens, instead of one. Both of which are non-functional.

The girl that suffered congestive heart failure. That stopped gaining weight. That stopped growing. The girl that struggled to breathe. Struggled to eat. The girl that I clutched to my chest in the middle of the night as I heaved silent sobs in a hospital rocking chair. The glow of monitors the only thing illuminating our faces and that night, my soul. The girl that, for the first time, painfully displayed just how sick she really was. Maybe even still is... The girl that has gross motor skill delays. Takes medication multiple times a day. The girl that has a cardiologist, hematologist, immunologist, gastroenterologist, nephrologist and physical therapist. The girl that has a fever protocol. A medical binder. An emergency sheet.

This girl... Would you look at her go?! What would it look like if more of us lived our lives blind to ‘The Things That Hold Us Back’? Would we lose more? Would we fail more? Would we hurt more? Or would we all have more grass stains on the seats of our pants?
Here’s to leaving our blankets of comfort and safety behind us, for the adventure that lies ahead. Here’s to taking notes from the girl who lives blindly to ‘The Things That Hold Her Back’. And here’s to countless more Google searches for: how to get grass stains out of the seat of your pants.

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