For the first time in my life, I've made a home that is my very own. No roommates, no half-my-stuff-in-storage, no moving-soon-anyway-so-won't-unpack-everything. It's all here. All the furniture and beauty I've accumulated over the years. All my dishes. All my quilts. All my books. 

For a couple years now, I've been frequenting estate sales and antique stores. I always show up in the last hours of the last day, when everything is half off. I figure if it's not still there on half-off day, it wasn't meant for me anyway...so why even go while things are still full price? Mom and I usually go together. We bounce ideas off each other and laugh our way through the floor. It's one of my favorite things to do with my mama. 

Anyway, I'm now all moved in and my collection is mostly complete. I'm in the (long-term) process of refinishing most of my antique wooden pieces, and I wasn't going to take any pictures until all my furniture was finished. But it's been a few months now since I moved in, and I still have a long ways to go as far as sanding and painting are concerned. So I decided to do a photoshoot as-is. I'm really proud of the homemaking I've done so far, and I want to share this space with my friends. I've had decor help and input from many ladies in my town...ladies who helped raise me and now call me Friend. It's been a thoroughly enjoyable process. 

Above all, I desire a home that is cozy...warm...inviting. I sit on my couch at some point every day, wrapped in a blanket, and sip tea. I eat breakfast at my breakfast table and curl up under the quilt on my bed. 

I love my home, and I hope it feels cozy and inviting to all who come to rest. 

Grandma had this quilt and bed skirt on her guest bed for my entire childhood. When she moved from Oregon, she gave it to Mom. It's been in a box on the top shelf of Jared's room ever since. On the wall the lyrics of, "In My Daughter's Eyes" are written in calligraphy and framed. Mama did that for me many years ago. The chest at the end of the bed is from JamiLyn, one of the women in the Village that raised me. She's now a dear friend. The nightstand was $20 on our local swap site. Mama restored it and painted it to match my quilt. The rocking chair is also from JamiLyn, as is the mirror box above it. The chair is over a hundred years old and once belonged to a sweet woman in our church. Inside the mirror box is a letter from a friend, written in calligraphy, and a sand dollar I found on the beach, in a storm, with Ben.  The quilt on the end of my bed is from Gramps. He gave it to Mama decades ago, and it's been in a box for a while. I love using it. 

That dresser is from the 1940s. It's in perfect condition and has never been restored. Mom found it for me on half-off day at an estate sale. Last weekend, we found its twin at another sale. Mom snatched the second one up as well...so someday, they'll both be in a room together. The birdhouse is one I saved from the property on which I grew up--Grandpa made a bunch of them for us, and they hung in our trees for over a decade. The gold mirror is one my mama's had my whole life, and in that frame is a note from my best friend, written in sharpie on a paper towel. It's survived four years of moving. 

That Homecoming Banner was stolen in a midnight raid by my best Baylor friends. We each got one. It's been on the wall in every place I've lived ever since. 

Everything I've ever sewn, I've sewn using this machine. I think it used to be my mom's. It's really old. My grandma taught me how to oil it and change the thread. I've been looking for a vintage sewing table for a long time. I finally found this one on the swap site, for $20. It needs a fresh coat of light and bright paint. The chair was given to me by Dr. Drea. It was given to her by some high school youth group kids playing the game "bigger and better." That's a beaver hat. My Minnesotan gramps gave it to me.

I'm working on bookshelves. Ben and I Craigslisted "free wood" one Saturday and drove to scavenge a pile of old barn wood. These shelves are going to be cool. 

Mom found the couch and wingback chair. Eventually, I'll recover them. But I like the floral right now. Mama found me that coffee table, too. I'm in love with it. The green chair has a matching one, under the Homecoming sign. I bought them at an estate sale. They were once owned by an old-money American family and were brought here from Britain over a hundred years ago. That lamp shade has 3 others like it. They're 90 years old and came out of an old barn in Texas. The great-great grandkids of the woman who once owned them sold them to me for $2 a piece. They had no idea how much they were worth and "just wanted to clear old junk out of the barn." Those are my sequin stilettos from Harrod's in London. I bought them with Gram when I was 18. That's a painting of my mountains. Bree spent a summer painting it for me, when I was really homesick. The wooden piece is from the 1800s. My friend Teri sold it to me and is going to help me restore it. 

That's the guitar I built in high school. I spent nearly my entire senior year in the wood shop. Those are silver fox furs. They were given to Miss Minnesota in 1920. My grandpa somehow acquired them, through her friends. They hung from the ceiling of his cabin my whole life. I've wanted them since I was a little girl...and so have all the other women in the family. When he sold the cabin a couple years ago, he sent me a box of keepsakes from that cabin I loved. They were in that box. 

Dad bought me that chest the summer I was a camp counsellor. I told him all the "veterans" and all the kids brought trunks to camp. So he went out to an antique store and found me a trunk. That's his old lunch box inside. The American flag only has 48 stars. It was at an estate sale at the beginning of the summer. The map is from the 1950's. It's yellowed and worn. I love it. 

This is my gear closet. It makes me happy. And my kayak spot. It makes me happy, too. 

This is my bathroom. Mom got me the yellow painting from Uganda. In the lady bug frame is a picture of two hands making a heart around the Eiffel Tower: mine and Blakey's. She's married with a new baby, now. We were 19 then. My makeup is kept in glass containers I found in a cabinet in Gramps' living room. He asked me to clean it out for him, and I kept a few things I liked.

This is my closet. I know, I have a lot of clothes. Sh. 

Another view of the living room. That end table was my great grandmother's. It's one of four things my mom wanted from her. The other three were another end table, a round mirror, and a flour canister. 

This is Bree's daybed. I thought of her as I designed this corner, so I call it hers. When she comes to visit, she'll sleep here. I've always wanted a little reading nook. Those are my dancing shoes. They've seen a lot of ballroom floors. Grandma bought them for me when I was a freshman at Baylor and joined the Swing Club. The twin bed matches the two white dressers. From the 1940's. The quilt is off the swap site. I found the embroidered pillow cases at an antique store a few weekends ago. Everything in the "quilt room" was half off. They were in the quilt room. The dust ruffle is Pottery Barn, and I salvaged it out of a dumpster at Baylor some years ago. I bleached it and washed it, and it was good as new. The shelf and mirror are from JamiLyn. The plate is one of Great Grandma's. I have three of her old plates. And the books are, well, old books. I think they're beautiful. 

The sweet woman whose family owns the house I live in (I live in the basement), gave me this curio. It belonged to her her parents. Those cigar boxes are from Gramps. In one of them are six letters. On the last night we were all together in one place, my Baylor friends and I sat on the floor by candlelight and wrote letters to each other. I will keep them forever. The gitchie bag up top used to hang in Gramps' cabin, right on the beam above where I always slept. That's my Papa's old box camera. The jar of mustard oil was Gramps' dad's. Great Grandpa Kelley. He was a Watkins dealer, and that's one of his old jars. It's over a hundred years old. The pottery globe I made in high school ceramics class. The Pacific Crest Trail sign I found in the old abandoned Santiam Lodge. Hayden had to carry me through the whole place because it was dark and scary and definitely haunted. The old bottles I've been collecting for years. One of the leather journals is my quote book. I bought it in a little cozy bookstore in the town where I went to Bible School in England. It's been collecting quotes for five years. Bree gave me that Wonderwoman comic. :)

The armoir was handcrafted in Mexico and brought here. I bought it for $25 from a woman whose mother needed to move and needed it gone. It keeps all my sewing fabric very well. That's the baby crib Papa built for me, when I was a little girl. All my babies slept in there, and my daughter's babies will too. 

Mama found me the old dresser. I bought the mirror for $5 at a Texas garage sale. It belonged to an old man, and he got tears in his eyes when I told him how much I loved it. I guess he'd always hoped it'd be passed down to someone who loved it. The wooden piece is from JamiLyn. The little piece of wood, Ben found for me. In that frame is the quote "to write is to love and to love another person is to see the face of God." Jake's Jen painted it for me. One of the masks is from Venice, the other is from that little bookstore in Carnforth, England. The tea set was my "play set" when I was a little girl. And that's my breakfast nook. Mama gave me the table and chairs. I love it. 

Sweet Marilyn (a grandma-by-heart) gave me her Ethan Allen dining table. It's been in her family for decades. I made those placemats out of coffee sacks from Sisters Coffee. The chairs are all mismatched and a bit broken. They need some wood glue and some love. Mama's been collecting them for me for a couple years. We finally have six. The frame by the door is from Nicole's barn. I brought it with me from Texas. Grandpa built that shoe rack. Marilyn gave me the sofa table, too. On the bottom shelf is a casket for a stillborn baby. My great-great-great relatives bought two of them...one to bury their son in, and one to keep. I somehow ended up with it. It houses my rock collection.

The kitchen. On the island is the teapot Marteen threw me, and the bowl I threw in high school. The baker's rack is from Mrs. Stewart. I traded her an hour of work for it, and then I spray painted it. The rug is from Gramps' cabin. Ben bought me the towels, to match my tea kettle. My parents and Nana & Gramps surprised me with the Kitchen Aide for college graduation. It's my baby. It's standing on a table I found at an estate sale last weekend. A very old table, with a crystal knob. That red plate is one of great grandma's. The stools at the island are the stools I grew up on. Mom and Dad had them hand built back when we lived on The Ranch. They work perfectly, here. 

A TV is supposed to go here, but I don't have a TV and didn't like the hole. So I made curtains. :) The aprons still need work, but I'm liking the idea. 

JamiLyn gave me that old door. It's just resting on juniper rounds. Nana bought me the sleeper sofa at an auction in Texas. It needs a slip cover. I made the curtains because I wanted to set this area off, as a nook. Now Ben can sit on the couch and play guitar while I play in the kitchen. :) The curtains are made of old curtain fabric my grandma gave me...it was in my scrap bucket...and a vintage sheet I bought for $1 at an old lady's garage sale. That's an old tractor wheel I found in a scrap pile at a burnt down barn. 

I love this little first place of my own. 

I want to say something about finding my place and my people. About the deep human desire for connection and roots, for depth, for investment. About figuring out where and with whom I am most at peace...and doing whatever it takes to be there. 

Toward the end of my time in Texas, I began having significant health problems. What started as gastrointestinal issues and major weight loss turned to emergency room visits and cardiologist appointments and heart tests. I thought I might have cancer. I began obsessively scanning my skin, mouth, inner eyelids, fingernails for strange moles or signs of growths. I watched my bowel and bladder habits and kept meticulous track of my weight loss, of my heart rate and blood pressure. Every small nuance and change was cause for documentation. If not cancer, surely a heart defect. I could visibly see the tip of my heart beating out from under my rib cage, my veins grossly distended, heart rate in the high hundreds. Mom would call, and I’d inform her of my findings, and upcoming appointments. Time and again, she’d offer just this: “maybe you’re stressed?” I pushed back. NO. I am totally chill. If I was stressed, I’d do something about it! I’d ask for help! I’m totally fine. I have something WRONG WITH  ME, MOM. I AM SICK. I was flying back to Oregon for a job shadow, then back to Texas to graduate and be in two weddings and pack my loft in a day and help a friend pack her house in two and making preparations for getting all my stuff shipped to Oregon on pallets and making sure my car was up to speed for the week-long journey home with dad and saying goodbye to my kindred-spirit Baylor friends and coming to terms with the fact that I was young and single and jobless and moving home to a town of 2,000 with seemingly zero prospects for either husbands or jobs and working on diplomatic explanations to offer the many well-wishers who felt the need to continually remind me of those two facts, and, and, EVERYTHING WAS FINE. Except me.

It’s been a full two months since moving back to this little town, nestled ‘neath the mountains I love, and my health problems have vanished entirely. Not a single issue since the day I left Texas. You know what I think? Mom was right. Though I didn’t notice any psycholgical feelings of stress, my body and psyche were being put through the ringer. I had been living for fifteen months in a place that provided NO peace. I had been out of my element, far from my family and close friends and mountains...and I was strained.

There’s something significant about being here, home, living again in the village that raised me...and helping to raise those who are growing up now. Something about digging in, down through the top soil, and putting in roots, about living a life that is deep and meaningful, about not merely working for the sake of work but finding the sort of work that allows me to be of service to others--to help others and build relationships and look at interactions through a long-term lens. 

I can walk these mountains, this high desert, and see my way in the dark--under starlight alone. I know the paths, and I am still learning them. I want to be here until I’ve learned and followed them all, and then teach my children and grandchildren to walk them, too. I don’t want to hasten to places because they’re tagged on Instagram or because a Facebook video says they’re the new hot spots. I want to be taken by friends, and by those older and wiser and more well-walked than I. I want my hair to silver and skin to wrinkle in the shadow of the mountains under which I once frolicked and flew kites with Dad, as a child...because it is by re-visiting places that never change that one realizes how much she, herself, has.
​
In these glacial lakes and between the ponderosa pines, I can breathe deep and reflect. I recall memories--of times long-gone, when I “came here with” this friend or that friend or those people. Here, the seasons mirror life and remind us that change is coming--that new life is on its way but winter must first bring the cold. 

​Yesterday, I officially finished nursing school. There were no fireworks, no parade, no whistling or clapping or cheering. It was just...I signed all my final evaluations and turned in my last little paper, and it was all over.

​I pulled into my apartment complex and snapped a picture of myself, to make the announcement on social media. I had no idea, then, that it would be the most-liked and commented-on picture I have ever posted. I received comments and likes from people I haven’t heard from in YEARS. It was shocking that 300+ people cared about my nursing school journey and the fact that I made it to the end. Most of the comments were things like “way to go!” “you did it!” “you have worked so hard!” “you are a rockstar!” and I found myself wanting to curl up into a ball a little bit because the truth is this:

I originally wanted the caption of the picture to be “We finished nursing school today.” Not ‘we’ as in the class of May 2016, but ‘we’ as in all the friends, family, and strangers who have helped me for the past 22 years, and me. 

I did not complete nursing school...or Baylor...or high school...or middle, or elementary...or my toddler years...in a vacuum. This may seem obvious, and in theory I think we all recognize its truth, but in practice we don’t always live like we believe it. We’re incredibly intent on, possibly even idolatrous of, individual achievement. But it’s only a myth...an often dangerous one, at that.

​When we allow ourselves, our culture, to embrace the Myth of Individual Achievement, we give ourselves FAR too much credit. In seeing ourselves as people who can accomplish things “all by ourselves,” we inherently view others that way too. “If SHE did it, why can’t I?” “He made it happen--I can too.” We simply do not give enough credence, in practice, to the ways in which we are supported, built up, helped along, given breaks, and connected to others.

We also don’t give enough credence to our circumstances--the type of home in which we were raised; the financial capabilities of our parents; the color of our skin; our external appearances. ALL OF THESE THINGS are factors that help us succeed, or sometimes keep us from being able to do so. Most importantly, ALL OF THEM are OUTSIDE OF OUR INDIVIDUAL CONTROL. 

The other day, I learned about multi-billionaire Sean Parker, one of the founders of Facebook. Wikipedia described him as a “self-made billionaire,” and I shook my head. ZERO PEOPLE are self-made anythings. Sean was born with an incredible mind, sure. At 15 years old he was making $80,000 a year because of his technological inventions. How? Through sheer self-determination? Well, a bit. But also because his parents let him use the family computer, which they were financially cabale of purchasing. And because he had a roof over his head and a bedroom in which to sleep and a mom to cook him meals so that he could spend his time working on his inventions. He had good friends who were also smart, with whom he collaborated, and a family environment stable enough that he was not psychologically damaged as a child. Then, he happened to be at the right place in the right time, befriending Mark Zuckerberg...and on and on and on. 

More and more, this narrative of “pull yourself up by your boot straps and you can become whatever you want to be,” isn’t jiving. I actually am not where I am solely because of “hard work and determination”. I think that narrative is both false and destructive. We need to be more nuanced than that. For one, I am here (a woman educated, able to vote, etc.) in part because of the suffragist movement. For two, I’m here (financially stable, able to own land, with parents who own land and a house) because at one point the government gave my ancestors money to homestead and farm, up north and out west. For three, I’m here (with minimal college debt, money in my bank account, and promising job prospects) because I had the good fortune of attending a solid high school with teachers who really cared, so I received nearly half of my Baylor tuition on merit scholarships. I have money in my bank account because I have an strong support system and therefore was able to pass nursing school with honors and hold down a job at the same time; and I have promising job prospects because I happen to know “the right people” and have a vast network of friends and family (and strangers) to connect me to the right people. 

Yesterday, my car broke down...twice. The first time, I had to buy a new battery. The second time, my alternator went out and both my alternator and A/C belts were shot. It was a $700 day that could have been stressful and exhausting, but it was neither. Why? Because I have parents who pay for me to have an annual AAA membership (so all I have to do is make one phone call when I have a problem, and someone comes to wherever I am, within an hour, and helps me) and because all the people who helped me yesterday did HUGE favors that were 100% outside of normal operating procedures to replace my alternator and my belts before 5pm. Also because I have an “emergency family credit card” in my wallet, so I simply charged all the expenses to that and didn’t give it a second thought. I’ll reimburse my parents at some point, but it’s not like I’ll be wanting between now and then. For some people, a spontaneous $700 day of car repairs would send them into debt...or break them. 

​When I ended up in the emergency room with heart problems last week, my mom was on a plane by 3am and by my side by 2pm the next day. How? Because we have airline miles stocked up  (my dad’s job used to fly him back and forth to China so often) and money saved for “emergency flights.” I bet there are a lot of mamas whose babies end up in the emergency room who simply cannot afford a plane ticket to “get there in time.” I’d bet my life on it. 

For the past four years, I’ve been receiving $20 bills in the mail, and sometimes checks for more, from my grandpa in Minnesota. They’re always a surprise, and I never expect them to come...yet faithfully, they do. Most of my gas since college began has been paid for this way.

When my family lived in Texas, they let me take “whatever I needed” from the house every time I came home. I don’t think I’ve had to buy toilet paper, paper towels, almond milk, coffee, flour, or sugar in four years. My Nana bought my bed and couch from an auction one Easter...and my down comforter, too. My printer is Dad’s old one, and Jake gave me the dresser from his bedroom.

When school was overwhelming, Trent and Bree would encourage me to the nth degree. When I needed to verbally process with someone who could reply immediately, Paige was on the other end of Voxer. My Baylor friends Skyped and called and kept the Family Group Text going, for comic relief, and faithful pen pals from high school and college continue to write. Vanessa sent me a box of love that arrived on a horrible day, in the rain; Suzanne still leaves me voicemails telling me she loves me; Nicole gives me permission to let my hair down; Sydnie leaves the kindest comments on my instagram.

Mentors from home (too numerous to list, honestly) have been cheering me on since I was a little girl. Aunnie, Uncle Greg, Jennie, and Stephen love me like none other, and Grandma bought me rainboots. Alli keeps me grounded and will forever be my Roomie--our memories together are unending. I have a dozen “second families,” and my second moms take care of me like I’m their own. The Starnes let me sleep at their house and fed me for over half the weekends of my nursing school career; the Falcones let me keep 33 boxes stacked in their family room; Elizabeth and Jimmy taught me about Jesus. The Ecclesia staff let the church become my “home away from home,” and my introverted self spent countless hours down on the couches around the church offices, doing school work and reading. Luke and Phil helped me stay sane by forcing study breaks (“wanna grab a beer after we get off work?”), and my PaperCo coworkers provided an incredibly fun environment in which to work and make tips. Aunt Michelle & Uncle Rex, Laura & Justin have been just a phone call away. Truthfully, this list is only the tip of the iceburg.

So what I want to say is: Thank You. It’s easy to believe that I’m pretty darn great and smart and hardworking and put together, until I stop and think about it for half a second. If I am working toward becoming any of those things, it is only because I am loved so well by you all. 

We did it. We finished nursing school. Let’s keep doing life together--we make a good team. 

I'm all cozied up at the Starnes' tonight, because sometimes I just need to remember what it feels like to be part of a family in a house full of people...so I get in my car and come here for a night or so. I've spent the day working on various to-do list items, and now the house is quiet and all the littles are in bed.

I went out and got some wood, started a fire, brewed a cup of peppermint tea, and sat down with a new book. I finished Wobegon earlier today. I left home yesterday knowing I'd probably finish it so I tossed the next book in my purse just for good measure. There's always reading to be done.

I'm about a fifth of the way through now, and I am absolutely convinced you need to read this book. It is a collection of essays, compiled by Hope Through Healing Hands, and it was given to me at the Mobilizing Medical Missions conference last weekend when I attended a seminar on Healthy Timing and Spacing of Pregnancy in the Developing World. The essays are written by men and women from vast and varied callings, occupations, and places in the world--all uniting under one banner: Worldwide Maternal and Infant Health. Jim Wallis, Jenny Allen, Natalie Grant, Tony Campolo, Rachel Held Evans, Jennifer Nettles, Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu...the list approaches fifty unique voices and writing styles.

​As a future midwife, I have a unique calling into the world of maternal and infant health, but I believe each of us is called to care about this issue, no matter our other unique callings or occupations.

One of my greatest passions is teaching & mobilizing. I have this constant nagging voice that says you can help a few--maybe a thousand--but if instead you teach & mobilize a few--a thousand--to teach a few, a thousand more...the impact will be a million-fold. So when I read David Steven's essay "Transforming the World," I got so excited. He and one nurse convinced a few local Kenyan volunteers to become Community Health Leaders. They were then each asked to recruit 7 volunteers to be trained under them, to go into the villages (each volunteer covered 100 huts) and encourage every household to change FIVE behavioral health practices (build a latrine, eliminate standing water, immunize their children, space their pregnancies, and have a source of clean water). The organization now reaches a million people through local volunteer efforts and has SINGLEHANDEDLY eliminated many of the preventable diseases Dr. Stevens was treating in his mission hospital just five years ago.

You guys. We do not have to be paralyzed by the needs in the world. Get your feet wet Upstream, roll in the mud a little Downstream--we need people of all kinds in both places. The one place we are forbidden by God is the place of indifference.

That we have an opportunity to be a part of sustainable and worthwhile solutions excites me. However, when I think of all the different sorts of lives I could live in the next 70 years, there is one that seems to keep threatening to wrap its tangly tentacles around my soul: The Life of Comfort, with The {The Illusion of} Safety. Pretty soon, I'll be making a decent living. I'll have a lot of options regarding how I do life. My prayer is that I never settle into comfort and that when I do, God will make me uncomfortable very quickly. Comfort is my idol, and it's a subtle one. 

But extravagant love isn't usually very comfortable. It looks a lot like loving enemies and risking humiliation and embracing the fact that the world is NOT safe and that my life is not more valuable than my neighbor's. 

I saw Bob Goff a few times last weekend, and he kept reminding us:
"You don't save people to Jesus. Jesus saves people to Jesus."

THAT is freeing me. Jesus saves people. Period. All my little boxes of safety and comfort and saying the right things at the right times--I can be free from all of that. I don't have to worry. I'm asked to love extravagantly, sacrificially, and then wait for Jesus Christ Himself to open blind eyes and soften hard hearts. 

And so, I am free to live on mission and to make a dent in the preventable problems plaguing our kind. So are you.

I think if we start with Mothers (and I believe every woman, childless or childbearing, has a Mother's heart), we'll watch a world of healing unfold begin to grow...igniting Life.

​An extraordinary amount of time has passed since I last wrote publicly, which either means my brain is full of thoughts needing to be penned and sorted out or full of unprocessed experiences and ideas that don’t yet seem coherent enough to be whole and ready for complete sentences. Maybe a little bit of both. Mostly, I think, the latter.
 
Several days ago I received a check in the mail for my contributions to a book project that will be published this Fall. Two days later I sent a letter off to The Good Poet in Canada, who had said in his previous correspondence:

“It’s not easy to be a poet. (Even one like me). In 2015 my book sold 6 copoes (I am serious). When you sell 6 copies in 12 months...you wonder does anyone give a rat’s ---? And then I get a lengthy epistle from J Richerson, and I get back to work on my latest draft.”

“Keep writing, Poet,” I replied in pen. “Most of the Greats weren’t truly discovered until they were gone. But they wrote/painted/created anyway--for the love of it, and for the love of humanity. Your words touch souls, deeply, and that is what matters. None of your friends care if you’re a bestseller, and none of mine do either. We perfect our craft for the joy of it...and because we can’t not. Love and Peace. Signed, Jordan your Friend.”

Yesterday, I received an email from a longtime international friend, proposing that I become the copywriter for her up-and-coming company and receive full compensation. Today I took a break from practice exams to pen a couple notes--one to a pen pal and one to a best friend who needed to be congratulated on big news. These events served to remind me that writing is, in fact, something I do--and that it’s important that I write for writing’s sake.
 
The issue these past five weeks has been...confidentiality. I am spending this semester working as a student nurse: 3-4 days a week, 12-hour shifts, in various hospitals and with various preceptors. Sometimes I work days, sometimes nights. During my first three-week rotation, I saw a lot of death. I hadn’t prepared for it to be that way...I didn’t know that "Actively Dying" would be the condition of most of my patients, but it was. I spent a lot of time in dark hospital rooms, just me and a dying patient, holding a hand or reading some Psalms or humming lullabies...trying to bring peace into what is, for some, a frightening transition. Because of HIPPA and other confidentiality mandates, I didn’t know how much of my experiences I could share publicly, especially during the weeks I was actually experiencing them. It’s alright to speak of them now, in the abstract as I’m doing here, but I cannot say much more.
 
Watching a fellow human’s heart stop does something, psychologically, to a person. I don’t know if the effect is positive or negative or neutral, but it’s...something. You blink your eyes and the monitor flatlines--big red X’s next to “HR, BP,O2 sat%.” You can be taking a blood pressure and get a 0/0 reading; walk into a room to do some charting and hear a final breath.

From a scientific and medical perspective, death makes perfect sense. When organs get old and/or sick, they get tired. The heart starts pumping really fast to try to get them more blood so that they’ll perk up. But a heart can’t sustain that sort of rapid rate for very long, and eventually it too will get so tired that it just has to quit. The lungs let out one last exhale and then blood flow ceases. When you see this process time and again, it is easily reduced to a simple and understandable physiologic process--as if bodies are machines with parts that are irreplaceable and eventually wear out. When we do postmortem care, it is obvious that there is a difference between those of us who are living and breathing and the body on the table. What's also obvious is that the difference isn’t merely physiological, it is clearly spiritual as well. That body is missing something those of us standing over it possess--more than a beating heart and working lungs, it is missing a soul.
 
When I arrive home in the morning and shower by candelight and lay in bed recounting the night’s events, the spirituality of death and loss of life becomes clear in a way it hadn’t been while I was in the thick of the Care of the Dying, on hours 3, 8, 11 of shift. I’m able to think about it for a few moments before drifting off into a deep slumber to be awakened by my Forest Sounds alarm clock at 4:30 in the afternoon. Head back to the hospital and do it all over again.
 
I don’t think I’ve adequately processed my experiences...and I’m not sure I ever will. What I am learning is that most humans live in a constant state of Much Unprocessed. There is simply not enough time to absorb, categorize, and understand all we see and do here on earth. We must keep putting one foot in front of the other to work hard, live well, and love WHOEVER is in front of us. We are more reslient than we know. We process what we can, and the rest we leave to God and ashes to ashes...
 
It’s amazing to me that any of us get out of bed in the morning, to be honest, with all our internal battles and the heavy stuff we’ve experienced and never processed. Life takes its toll and then we...just keep on and keep on keeping on.
 
I’m in a more joyful set of clinicals, right now. Helping mamas birth babies is my happy place.

​But I keep a little list in the back of the moleskine I carry around in the pocket of my scrubs--of those I’ve loved on and helped ease into the transition of eternity--to remind me that we’re all Actively Dying. Some more obviously than others, but each of us in time. One day my initials will be scrawled in the back of a book a twenty-something nursing student carries around in her back pocket: JR 1993-20__.

The circle of life goes ‘round and round here on our little blue speck in the midst of the cosmos.

And so as we actively die, we actively live...and we wait in hopeful anticipation for the day when All Things will be Restored to Glory, when death will cease and Life will Reign, and when Jesus Christ himself will be here to resurrect bodies and reunite them with souls.

​One more thing:
I have noticed a marked difference in the dying-experiences of those who believe in Jesus and have set their sights on an Heavenly eternity with Him...and those who do not know Jesus Christ and have not accepted His grace. This is not a scare-tactic; it is the truth, as I have seen it. The former often pass quietly and say things like: “I’m ready to be with my Lord.” The latter often describe flying bugs and hairy winged creatures...and the sensation of being strangled, unable to breathe, or horribly uncomfortable. This is a trend I’ve witnessed enough that I feel it is worth mentioning. You may have different experiences, and I believe you. I’m not here to discount anyone else’s testimonies of being with those who are dying...only to add my own to what is already being shared. Because I believe in a life after this one, it makes sense to me that those nearing the threshold may catch glimpses of it. I think the difference between the Glimpses is worth noting.
 
Alas. Time to start winding down so I can get eight hours of shuteye in before getting up to catch the bus in the morning.
 
May God continue to grant us all the strength to live life Unprocessed...and to trust that He holds the map to this jigsaw puzzle we mostly don’t understand.
 
Grace and Peace.

This is my mama, and she turns 51 today, and I love her very very much. 
I wrote a little something, here, for her 49th birthday, and now I just repost it for every birthday because it's one of my favorite things I've ever written!! Plus, it has so many fun old pictures.

So, GO READ IT!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my mama and bfffffff.

She's the best. Truly.

I cannot recall the last time I resolved to begin something upon the start of a new year. 

This year, however, I am making three changes. It's the second Monday of 2016, and I decided today was the day to announce my resolutions:

1) flossing my teeth every night (dentist said so; fine.)

2) drinking a full glass of water as soon as I get out of bed every morning 
(you'd be amazed at the health effects this has--it is single handedly changing the way my body feels before breakfast & coffee)

3) keeping my phone away from my bed; to this effect, I have purchased an alarm clock, with nature sounds (because it's replacing my beloved Sleep Cycle app). 

After searching far and wide, I found this at target for $12, and I am so happy I can't even stand it.  It was the last one on the shelf, and the docking station is for an iPhone 4 (nearly obsolete), so I think that's why it was so cheap. I couldn't find an alarm clock with nature sounds ANYWHERE for less than $40. I've got an iPhone 5, so the dock won't work for me! BOO YAH! My aversion to having a smart phone near my bed paid off, literally. 

There is something to be said for NOT having my phone screen be the last thing I see before falling asleep and the first thing I see upon waking up. I've resolved to awaken, drink my water, brush my teeth, read the Word, and do my other necessary morning tasks before picking up my phone this year. 

I'm so serious.

I have a to-do list in my Notes, and the very first item is “finish Mexico blog post.” It’s been there, at the top, for nearly a month now. I don’t know why I do not seem capable of sitting down and just finishing the thing, but alas. I’ve had the most wonderfully restful break here in the snowy little town that raised me, and tomorrow I fly back to Houston. The next time I’m back here, I will have graduated from college and will be a registered nurse.

It’s amazing to me how old wounds can surface after any amount of time. Maybe as a melancholy temperament I experience this phenomenon more acutely than others do, or maybe most of us understand but rarely discuss it. I can go months, years, without thinking of certain people or events that hurt--and I can forgive and move on a thousand times--and still, the cracks in my heart can reopen in a single moment, as if they were fresh just yesterday and I’ve awoken this morning to reality all over again.

I broke down in tears today, "grown up" and alone on my little brother’s bed, over many things and people that have been lost. Over things that once were, and will never be again. Over friendships that were once deeper than family but are now as superficial as strangers. Over unanswered prayers and unrequited love and improper timings. I haven’t broken down like that in a very long time, but sometimes being back here and driving all the old roads and seeing the mountains and fields and fences again makes for a case of profound nostalgia. 

The truth is, time isn’t really real. Time is told by the seasons and the years, felt and expressed by our physical bodies, but our souls know no time. We were created for eternity, and from God’s view, every day is both yesterday and today and tomorrow. He sees the whole timeline from above; we see and feel from point to point. And so, our bodies and calendars tell us “four, ten, twenty-five, fifty years have gone,” and our souls say “it was all in the blink of an eye.” We are eternal at heart and made for forever. So, physical time doesn’t sit well with us, when we think about it too deeply. 

Just think: a sand-digger fly’s whole life is five minutes long. A mosquito lives ten days; a monarch butterfly less than a year. To me, a human who could potentially live more than a hundred years, five minutes is but a drop in the bucket; ten days a few blocks on this year’s calendar; a year only two semesters of school. But to that fly? Five minutes is a literal lifetime. An incredibly significant, not-one-second-wasted lifetime. And yet to us, decades whizz by. Old friends who haven’t seen each other since graduation “pick up like no time has passed;” lovers celebrating their 70th anniversary swear “they got married yesterday;” parents watch their babies walk across the graduation stage and think “just last week, they were in diapers.” 

The truth is, at twenty-two years old I have not prepared myself to watch doors shut, to see friends and family get sick and die, to lose those I love. During childhood, it’s easy to believe that “everything will stay just like this.” All the doors will always be open, the world will always be an oyster, nothing will ever be permanent. But the truth is that, on earth, there is permanence. I’m sure many of you had that figured out long before 22, but that reality is only just now becoming clear to me. 

I am so thankful I believe in eternity. To believe that these months, days, years are the end-all-be-all would be such a frustrating endeavour. It would mean that wounds that have not healed by the time I die will remain forever unhealed--that some of the wrong I’ve done and not been forgiven for would just be over and done, without resolution. But I believe in a God who is in the business of redeeming and restoring and righting. He has put eternity in our souls--allowed us to feel these aches as time passes--to show us that we have been created for more than a timeline with an end date. When we look in the mirror and see wrinkling skin and greying hair but our spirits feel sixteen and free...He wants us to embrace that disconnect. It’s a disconnect that draws us to Him because we cannot make sense of it and must trust that He can, and has. 

And, it is true, that some of my friends will be my friends forever. Eternally. I texted Trent, as I was crying, and said: 
“I’m glad we’re forever friends.” 
“Forever and ever. I hurt with you.”
“Thanks; it’s the best anyone can do.”
“It’s a hurt I still hurt.”
“We can’t fix each other’s hurts, usually. And God doesn’t usually fix them either. But He’s with us. And, likewise, we can be with each other.”
“Just bear a bit of each other’s burdens.”
“Yep, that’s Galatians.”
“Yep.”
“xoxo”
“Walk alongside.”
“Amen.”

And so, as I find time to be such a strange and unreal thing, it stirs a disconnect between my calendar & body and my soul, and that disconnect draws me back to friends and family, and to Jesus.

I’m thankful for the assurance of eternity...where broken hearts will be made whole and tears will be wiped from eyes by our God, who loves us and is whispering
however softly
and through whatever painful disconnects
“there is so much more than this...wait, and see.” ​

We are eternal at heart.
We are made for forever.
Every day feels just like yesterday.
Decades mean nothing.
With eternity in our souls, time isn't really real.
A sand-digger fly's entire life is five minutes long.
And this damn song won't stop playing on the radio.

Beginning this new year feeling like I'm still eighteen and finding it nearly impossible to believe that four years have passed since I graduated high school and that I went to Bible school, travelled Europe, moved to Texas, spent two and a half years as a Baylor Bear, and started and nearly completed nursing school in that time.

There has been much loss, and many gains; a lot of unanswered prayers, and some answered ones; leaving and beginning; remembering and forgetting.

Between Jana and Miranda, there have been tears on this Friday, one week into the New Year.
I do not fight them...because they are meaningful. 
Life is both beautiful and brutal--brutiful. 
And all the magic movies say tears are healing. Lord, let it be so.

{This post was originally written for, and published at, The High Desert Life. Please see their website for all things Central Oregon. I am a huge advocate for their vision and what they're doing.}

“It all makes sense now.”
​
Best words I could ever hear from a friend. It makes sense, now, why I talk about my home all the time, why I can’t get it out of my head or my heart or my soul, why I swear that place and its people shaped me, why it’s the biggest and greatest part of my story and my past. I have said for so long that *I* only make sense in light of the place and people who raised me, and the Jesus who saved and continues to save me.
​
Some dear Texas friends of mine visited our tiny mountain village not too long ago. Mom and Dad picked them up from the airport and drove them down the winding desert roads to our little house in town.

One morning, they woke up and followed the directions I sent them to my favorite hike, a few miles out of town and way up in the mountains. It’s the hike I take every time I’m home, with my dear childhood friend Hayley. We always have a year or more of catching-up to do on our way to the top, and we usually continue on off-trail to the base of the mountain, a few miles in the distance. No matter the weather, we take our clothes off and jump in the lake after our descent.

They visited “Melvin’s Fir Street Market” and asked for Melvin himself, because I told them that Melvin is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s been the town’s “Health Food Store” guy for as long as I can remember (and for at least a decade before that). I told them they’d love his little store. All kinds of good food. It’s where I treat myself before I go out of town to hike or climb. “On your way back, I’d encourage you to stop in there,” I said. “I worked there a couple days a week for many summers. Everything I know about business and stores, I know from Melvin. We used to take our lunch breaks together and I’d ask him a million questions about how he’s been so successful in such a small town, and he’d teach me things. Anyone in town will know where “Melvin’s” is.

They didn’t have time to make it to the forge, or the high school, or the fields where Dad took me every Sunday after church to hit fly balls so I could “get good enough to make Varsity.” They didn’t know all the fields where we played night games or the trees we’d hide in when we TP’d our town-friends’ houses.

They didn’t have time to swing by The Hangar, where I spent every Wednesday night learning about Jesus from Dan Keels, or Sisters Community Church, where I was raised by The Village. They didn't see the elementary school fields, where Dad took Jake and I to fly kites and launch rockets, or The Pumphouse, where I bought my first pack of wood-tipped cigars for myself and my girlfriends one night when we needed them for our bonfire around the lake. They didn’t make it up to Hoodoo, where I learned to ski and spent every winter skiing and playing cards in the lodge for the majority of my life, and they didn’t see Billy Chinook, where I spent every summer wakeboarding and water skiing.
​
They didn’t walk on the dock at Suttle Lake–which I’ve been jumping off since I was six years old, and they didn’t have time to run out to the Metolius to drink from its crystal waters like I have so many times.

They missed the chance to run The Bone Trail to Eagle Rock and cross over the little stream that I get down on all floors to soak my parched lips in every time I pass.
They didn’t know that Eagle Rock held me as a 6 year-old girl when I was brand new to the town and about to start first grade, and that it’s the first place I ran to when I arrived “home” fourteen years later after having left to see the world and start college in a state 2,000 miles away. They didn’t get to see my initials carved deep in the oak tree at the top.

But they got the gist. They smelled the mountain air and felt the crisp mornings on their skin. They noticed that every street is named after a type of tree and that you can only walk two miles before you’re in the woods outside of town.

They sat in Sisters Coffee, where I wrote my Valedictorian speech, and I told them there used to be a little tiny house on that property that could only fit about 20 people inside. On cold, snowy winter days, we’d line up outside, all the way down the sidewalk. Dad would bundle me tight, and I’d order a hot chocolate once inside. 

They got to sleep in the duplex my parents have been renting out for as long as I can remember–and I told them there used to be a little green house on that property. When I was seven or eight, the fire department guys did a “demo” on it while we watched it combust from the park across the street–I sat on the fence rails and Dad stood behind me. After it burned, my parents built the set of duplexes that sits there today.

​They got to see the mountains that greeted me every morning for 15 years–the mountains where I first learned to backpack in the snow, with IEE friends and leaders.

It’s funny, you know. When I was eighteen years old and graduated from high school, I couldn’t wait to spread my wings and fly–to leave our little town for the “big wide world” and get out of the bubble. And here I am, at twenty-two and nearly finished with college. In a few short months, I’ll have a degree and be a registered nurse. You know what I’ve decided?

I’ve decided that I flew far, and wide, for long enough. I’ve decided that the rest of the world has its beauty, and living in new countries and states is great, but there is truly no place like Sisters, Oregon.

I’ve decided, Lord willing, to go Home–to the mountains, to my family, and to the little town that has made a little Sisters-shaped hole in my heart.