About Me

April 2025

Disclaimer: For those new around here but are aware of my cancer diagnosis in early 2024, I named this blog back when I was in grad school in 2008. So, the name and the diagnosis are unrelated. The full story on the name is below.

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"Not all those who wander are lost."  One of my favorite quotes by the very brilliant JRR Tolkien.  I sure have done my fair share of wandering.  Probably lost a time or two.  I have lived the life of a gypsy it seems, much preferring wings over roots.  Four years of school in Missouri, college summers spent in San Diego, North Carolina, and Russia, then home for awhile, back to Missouri for two years of grad school, Kenya for a month, home for almost two years, back to Kenya again and a whole lot of other places in between and since. But with the passing of time, I have found myself preferring roots far more than wings these days, and I don't always know if that's a good thing or not. 

Somewhere along the way, though, perpetually caught between roots and wings, I fell in love with Jesus.  And not just in a he's-my-best-friend, saved-me-from-my-sins, got-me-out-of-hell kind of way, but more like I have weighed my options, shaken my fists at the heavens, doubted him, betrayed him, walked away from him, and still decided at the end of it all that I would choose to tether my life to him. He's the anchor of my life and I am nothing without Christ.  
 
As I logged the airline miles, met new friends, worked a variety of jobs, and became all-too-familiar with the inside of an airport, I had to figure out what it looked like to exit gracefully from each season, each stage, each relationship.  I first came across the quote from my former Dean of Students/boss/current friend.  She gave me a copy when I graduated from college.  I had already left Missouri and she sent me a note a month or so later, saying something along the lines that she saw me as someone who had figured out how to exit gracefully. Ellen Goodman, a columnist, wrote in her final column for the Washington Post,

"There's a trick to the graceful exit. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over — and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out. It's hard to learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there. The experiences and the growth are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves along — quite gracefully."

Hanging out with some reindeer in Fairbanks, Alaska
December 2023

It's how I want to live my life, wherever it takes me.  I want to own what I learned back there, to not deny its past importance because there are a great many things in my life that have past importance.  I didn't leave the best parts of myself behind, back in college, back in high school, back at my last job.  I don't ever want to resign myself to the idea that I have already lived the best parts of my life.  Who I am right now is enough - because Christ is enough.  There are people in far off lands to love on, nieces and nephews to invest in, friends to linger over amaretto sours with, co-workers to engage with, family to be dysfunctional with, a holy and righteous God to pursue, and now apparently there's also the matter of figuring out how to live life with cancer.  Life is messy and complicated and confusing. Maybe I will spend my remaining days wandering after all. But more importantly, I want to spend my days taking myself along - quite gracefully.