My cousin passed away yesterday. She would’ve turned 33 this month, and typing about her in the past tense feels utterly surreal.

Paula was born when I was ten years old. I must have been hoping she’d be born on my early December birthday, but she chose to make her arrival in November. She was the first child born to my Uncle Tim and Aunt Jan, both of whom I loved very much, and I was profoundly excited. Though I had loved on dollies my whole life, I never slept with a stuffed animal until someone gave me a small teddy bear for my 10th birthday. I named her Paula. That Paula resides in my closet. My cousin Paula now rests, her spirit is at home with her Lord and Creator.

Paula was vivacious and thoughtful in turns. She had a sense of humor that cracked me up. It was whip smart and hilarious and could touch on any cultural reference. I didn’t always understand the actual punchline, but if Paula was throwing down the joke it was for sure snarky and funny. 

Paula had such an openness to her that children loved her. My daughter Livia especially loved being around Paula because she was so much FUN. I want to text Paula right now, demand that she still lives, that a cruel joke was played yesterday, and then laugh about the dumb moments we shared together. Paula witnessed our dog Shiloh snarfing down a snack from the coffee table only to literally spit it out when my husband Jeremy (his Alpha) came down the stairs. A dog spitting out a goodie? I’ve never seen it happen before and never will again, but it happened when Paula was staying with us for a holiday and it made her and me laugh over and over again. 

Paula introduced me to new music. She was open with me about her struggles and her love for her Savior and desire for a closer walk with Him. Once she knew that chili and cinnamon rolls were a THING here in the Midwest she never got over it, insisting that it was a super nasty combination. She was wrong, but that’s okay. ;) 

Paula carried the intelligence of her dad and the compassion of her mom throughout her 32 years. She loved her family. She loved her pets. She loved her friends and particularly cherished her years playing ultimate frisbee. She loved her church, and she especially loved children. 

Paula, I have loved you since the moment I knew you were a wee person in your mother’s womb and I shall love you into eternity. How grateful I am that I will see you in heaven, in perfect wholeness and at perfect peace. But for now, I miss you like nothing else. You are irreplaceable and one-of-a-kind. No one can take your place in my heart.

I once worked alongside a woman who was tough. In an office building full of warm and empathetic individuals, she stood out as a person who wasn’t interested in chitchat, didn’t smile very often, and certainly didn’t seem to care if you were the latest student-worker in a long line of uninteresting student workers. She was not, shall we say, nurturing whatsoever and her reputation preceded her.

I was nervous every single time I had to approach her desk and ask her a question. As a person who excelled in the “getting people to like me” category (I could say a few thing about my idolization of likability now), I wasn’t used to interacting with personalities like this one. After I got over my initial surprise at her lack of warmth, I decided something: I was going to work hard to win her over. Putting my own feelings aside was not the norm for me—and still isn’t—but I recognized something in my early 20’s and it was that I was going to have to work on this relationship over time. There was an obstacle—her—and there was a hurdle to get over, and I was determined to conquer this challenge.

In conquering the challenge, I learned a huge lesson in relating to people. Not everyone is a warm fuzzy person! Some people have tough exteriors borne of hard circumstances and others have natural bends towards introversion. Whatever the reason, people are people and will behave differently and that has nothing to do with their motivations, interests, and, hopefully, my relationship with them. This woman became a friend to me during my years of working in this environment, and she is still my best example of powering through what initially felt like a hard situation. I have fond memories of her now.

I confess that I don’t want for my daughter to go through hard times. I want to bubble wrap her, ensuring she has a soft heart towards the world and protecting her from the cruelty I’ve seen. I want to wrap my kindness around her to deflect the unkind words that come in her direction. I want to lay pillows at her feet to protect her from inevitable falls. I want to open her eyes to rainbows and flowers and sunsets without her having to witness the heavy winds and tornados and, yes, the floods. At some level I understand Helicopter Moms. The desire to protect and want the very best for our progeny is strong. With privilege, power, and influence, some of us will stop at nothing to push our children into the future that we think is best, along the route that we think is best, and you better believe we’re going to deflect those hard times we see coming a mile away.

But oh, that’s not the way to go. Not at all.

Even while I was typing about sunshine versus storms, I couldn’t help but notice that sunshine means little unless you’ve been through the longest winter on record and you lost track of warmth and light and were moved to a hopeless place in your heart. Isn’t spring all the more sweet after a hard winter? Each bud on the tree now sings praise to its Maker, and your heart is moved to do the same. Spring isn’t nearly as interesting without the hard crust of snow and layers of salt and the same winter boots pulled on day after day. It is this contrast of lovely versus unlovely that awakens us to the blessings we have.

Our pastor said something in a sermon months ago about hoping that his kids will suffer. Okay okay, it’s so out-of-context here that it’s not fair, and yet, suffering is absolutely part of this human experience. I can tell quite quickly whether a fellow adult has ever suffered based on their compassion and empathy for another suffering human. We don’t mature without have the hard edges rounded off, and oftentimes that rounding happens in the toughest of moments. Every scrape of a knee and fall from a tree leads to a child figuring out her boundaries. The mistakes made in adolescence lead to knowing one’s limits. The stupidity of early adulthood leads to important life lessons.

I can’t be a Helicopter Mom any more than I can sprout wings and fly south when the first snows begin to fly. While everything within me yearns to protect my growing child, I do not believe she is best served by being bubble wrapped and protected from the difficulties of this world. If I remove her from every hard situation—which I physically cannot do—how will she learn her limits? How will she rebound and be bolstered internally when the external world is hard to understand? How will she learn rely on God, who is always present and available to her?

Many kids I know have already been through a lot by the time they hit middle school. I think of those who’ve been adopted—whether in infancy or in later years—and I know they’ve experienced a level of trauma completely unknown by those of us who have been raised by our biological parents. I think of the children I’ve spent time with through the foster care system, and though others may never know of their struggles, I know of the addictions, the lack of parental consistency, the unsafe dwelling places, the abuse and the near-constant neglect may of them have faced by the time they started kindergarten. And kids who aren’t in foster or adoptive homes? Still, life can get hard. The death of a parent, divorce, remarriage, sexual molestation, cross-country moves, bullying at school and home, unkind teachers and coaches, and financial difficulties can all shake up a person from the outside, while from the inside there’s a variety of developmental delays, physical disabilities, and mental illnesses that plague children.

However, the human heart is amazingly resilient. I saw this in the eyes of my students during my student-teaching days and I see it now in my child and in her friends and in my friends’ children. Despite hard things, the human spirit wants to succeed, and it doesn’t want to succeed because a Helicopter Mom removed all difficulties. No! We overcome the difficulties. We make changes. We rebound with encouraging words and encouraging examples and we don’t take for granted the people around us that offer a “You struggle with that? ME TOO!”

So on days (weeks, months, years!) when I feel like protecting my kid, I’ll try to reflect on how much stronger she’s grown in every area that matters in these past 14 years of life. I see her grow in smarts, in empathy, in artistic skills, in relating to animals, and in her faith in a God she can’t see but Who exists and is true and good. I will try to look back at those adorable baby pictures and crazy toddler antics and reflect on the joy she’s brought me and so many others in her world. Perhaps the hardships of this life serve as grit to clean the dirt off of the windows of our souls. May it allow the lights within each of us to shine brighter and brighter as we grow.

I love these people! This is us getting a bit giggly at the end of our [miniscule] photo shoot. Now that I’ve got my tripod game figured out there’s no excuse not to have something to frame for the grandmas! Here’s one of the extras from our brief foray out in the Nebraska wind two days before Christmas.

She gets in the car and is ready to write. No one is telling her what to do or where to do. No obligations anymore, no bells signaling changing classes, no need to do homework, no places to go. Just an exhale of breath and the ability to choose, and what she chooses is to write. She writes and writes and writes. Her voice coming through the walls quietly, spaces in between for silent editing. How did I get so lucky to be her mama? Why did God give me a writer? What a joy.

Shi-lawnie the Cotonie. Shiloh-loh-loh. The Woochest with the Moochest. This dog is a bundle of excited energy + long nap times + family adoration. He’s both the biggest goofball and the sweetest dog I’ve ever met. I like to think God gave us dogs as proof of undeserved grace upon mankind. I love my silly Shiloh (who is a Coton de Tulear, thus the title).

There she goes! With grace, beauty, excitement, butterflies, and an iced coffee to start her day. I could not be more proud of this 8th grader. God has given Jeremy and me an amazing kid who makes us laugh, surprises us, loves us, and becomes more and more each day a tremendously cool person. Livia Raine, we love you incredibly and we pray that God matures you this year into a woman of courage who honors Him. Happy first day, kid!

First Day Pics Roundup!
Kindergarten
First Grade
Second Grade
Third Grade
Fourth Grade
Fifth Grade
Sixth Grade
Seventh Grade

I spend most of the year dreaming of travel and planning, simultaneously, a dream trip as well as the next actual trip. So then it always takes me aback when it’s time to pack and I start feeling a sense of dread about the whole endeavor. I get nervous about the unknowns, I am unsure of exactly what clothing items will be appropriate, and I question the wisdom of the whole affair. Basically, I go from Adventure Lover to total and complete Hobbit. I look around my home and wonder why I’d ever leave it. But then the magic comes back to me as soon as the horizon opens up and I am driving or flying to new places. Inspiration hits. Words start coming back to me, I wish for a camera in my hand, and the sweetness of it all floods in. This last week was precisely what I wrote above—that common mixture of excitement, dread, and fulfillment once more.

This trip, however, involved my entire family and as we drove west on I-80 I’d say we felt a bit like a speedier version of a turtle or a snail—we had everything we needed with us. No man was left behind, and we carried all we wanted in our family car. As the resident Travel Dreamer, I’m the one that usually goes while the others stay, but not this time. We were all together. And since we were all together, we were a mishmash of relational issues, all entangled in the relatively small square footage of our Nissan Altima.

Road trips are an interesting thing, aren’t they? There’s this imaginary family we all have in mind who all hear the call of the open road and somehow they look cool pursuing it. But friends, I don’t know that actual family. Reality looks much more like a thousand personalities, moods, wishes, irritations, attitudes, and opinions crammed into a small space. One person has to pee while another never wants to stop. Another can’t sit ONE MORE MINUTE on her road-weary bottom and wants utter silence in the vehicle while the others are up for a dance party at 75mph. One thinks it’s entertaining to regale the car with how very much she loves the scenery while another is loudly eating the entire canister of Pringles in one sitting. Mom is focused on obsessively throwing out trash at every single pit stop while Dad is annoyed the Horse Lovers of Colorado have decided to parade down Main Street right this very moment as he’s trying to leave town. Family road trips might be about togetherness, but I think they’re a test. During the bulk of the year families can spread out a little bit more, but on a road trip, it’s work-it-out time. The good, bad, and the ugly all come out and you’re forced to deal with it all. It’s healthy, even though it’s not always pretty. The next time you’re tempted to wish you looked like that uber cool traveling family, don’t. I promise you such a thing doesn’t exist because in real life there’s always someone who has to stop and use the restroom. In real life, there’s chip crumbs all over the once-clean car seats. But potty breaks and crumbs can’t dissuade you from making memories. So in the car you go. And last week that’s what we did. From Lincoln to Denver to Estes Park and back to Lincoln once more. And I’m so so happy we made these memories together.

When she was little we practiced pew-sitting. We realized that it was a rare occasion that our squirrelly little one had to sit still next to us, and so we literally practiced on the 8-foot pew—picked up somewhere along my parents’ many moves across the country—now taking up space in our dining room.

When Livia was three each Sunday felt like a little bit of a crisis for me as a stay-at-home mom eager to receive rest and rejuvenation. Our church tragically burned down that summer, and I remember writing our pastors an email and begging for children’s church to be reinstated, you know, for the single moms who really needed a break (and me, PLEASE!). God bless those people who love crazy three year olds; for me it was, let’s say, a challenging time.

As it turns out, our daughter didn’t stay three forever. She grew in stature and in maturity, and sitting at church became easier and easier. We moved from those days of goldfish snacks and soft-sided toys to crayons and books, and then to listening fully to the sermon and participating in the service.

I will say this for church: it is one of my favorite spots of the week. There are myriad of spiritual reasons why I need church—why anyone does—and that is to get my heart re-routed to what God says is important. I have the memory of a gnat and forget day-to-day, if not moment-to-moment, who I am and Who God is. Worship on Sunday becomes a “reset” button for the rest of my week. But I’ve found a delightfully unexpected joy in the regular act of church worship, and it is the quiet action of sitting with my family, hearing God’s word.

Every Sunday we go to church. It’s what we do. In the early days of our marriage, Jeremy and I had lengthy discussions about why we went to church, and interestingly enough, our strong-headed natures (which caused lots of fireworks the first two years) kept us faithfully attending church. We were students, which meant we were really tired and always behind in some sort of classwork, but when one partner was lazy the other wasn’t. We went to church. That same stubborn determination continued when we had kids, only it was remarkably easy to make it to church for a period of years as we had moved to the same city block as our home church. It just gets embarrassing when you sleep through a service instead of rolling out of bed and down the block with the other parishioners.

So now we are in church every week because we need it. Because we love it. Because God does something different there when His children are gathered to worship Him. Because our souls get fed the spiritual food they crave. And because we are loved well by that rag-tag group of human beings, from every walk of life it seems, gathered together under one roof because we are each other’s family in Christ.

In the pew at Redeemer my little family is focused on the same topic for 90 minutes each week. The Holy Spirit moves in us differently, and we welcome the work He is doing. I get to reach out on one side and hold my husband’s arm. I can reach out on the other and pull my daughter to my side while singing choruses. (Note: she’s now moving farther and farther away from me in the pew. Y’all behind me can watch the Progression of the Teen Independence these next few years. Get yo popcorn.) We are a family, and we go to church together. I am not in control of Livia’s thoughts about church, and the way she’ll interact with God and His people in the future is not up to me. But I hope the truths she finds in our church—and in our home—will carry her forward in this life until she meets the Lord face to face.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros sing it best: Home is wherever I’m with you.

I struggle greatly with travel anxiety. As much as I love to go to new places and experience new things, I have a hard time doing it on my own. It’s less about extroversion and more about chronic conditions that can get weird in a heartbeat. (Diabetes, I am TOTALLY talking about you, you punk.) I play a game called “worse case scenario” that sometimes helps me, but when I go alone, the anxiety is there. My brain is constantly trying to figure out how to keep my body safe and I end up being on high alert for hours on end, if not the entire trip. Not my fave.

Last week I had the enormous privilege of traveling, much like a turtle, with my home with me. Though we lacked the creature comforts of our own beds and pillows—Jeremy’s biggest problem—and our own bedroom doors that shut–Liv’s biggest problem–all of us expressed pure joy that we were **together**. Team Tredway. There’s an unexpected tidiness of this only-child situation where we can easily share one room together, we can easily sit by each other on plane rides, and we can share in adventures now that Livia is older. It is tremendously sweet. We were not without the very human struggles that families have, but we were highly aware of the fun of an adventure together.

At some point I realized the intense lack of anxiety I was experiencing with my family with me. And what. a. relief. Airplanes and airports became more fun. Plane delays were no big deal, and schedule changes were met with flexible spirits. I had no parental guilt of leaving a kid behind because she was with me! And bonus, I had my BFF-husband the entire time. As I write this I recognize how often I travel without them, too. And that can be a good thing as well.