Things I Don’t Ever Need to Do Again

You know, I’m reaching that age in life where I realize there are just some things I never need to do again. A lot of those realizations have come recently, or at least some conversation has brought one from the past to mind. These aren’t things that I never wanted to try in the first place—I willingly opted into them, and now I know I have no desire to ever opt into them again. Anybody else have these moments, or is it just me? I’m just far more realistic these days, not only about my preferences, but also about my physical limitations, particularly since my brain surgery in 2024. And not only realistic, I’m willing to admit and acknowledge those preferences and limitations without feeling bad about it or saying “yes” out of obligation. I can simply say “no” to things and carry on with life. I realize a lot of people may not have that issue, but in the past I would have carried the burden of guilt. Now it’s just “no,” and I don’t need to think about it.

I remember having a frank conversation with a guy I dated a while back about our future, and we both acknowledged that there were hurdles on both sides. His hurdle? He didn’t think I would ever go camping with him. I told him that was probably true. I’ve gone tent camping only twice in my life, one of those times in my parents’ backyard. I borrowed a co-worker’s tent, and my niece and I spent one night in it. She was much younger then and had never been camping before, so we treated it like a trial run for her. I crawled out of that tent the next morning and thought to myself, “I don’t ever need to do that again.”

My mom and I went to Montana in May and stayed at the Clydesdale Outpost. Neither of us had been there before. We decided that if we were going to go all that way, we were at least going to ride one of the beasts. So we signed up for a ride. With all the safety instructions, the reserved time was one hour, but the actual ride was about twenty-five minutes. I’ve ridden plenty of horses in my life, but never a draft horse. Find a wine or bourbon barrel, turn it on its side, climb on, and you’ll have an idea of what it’s like to ride a Clydesdale. I didn’t know my hips, knees, and ankles could point in those kinds of directions. My mom and I both got off our horses and said, “We don’t ever need to do that again.”

It was kind of fun while it lasted.
Certain body parts said otherwise when we dismounted.

I was a good little reader this summer and participated in my local library’s summer reading program (it’s not just for children!). For each book you read, you could turn in a ticket with your name on it to be entered into a raffle, up to ten tickets. I read ten books and turned in all my tickets. I ended up being one of the winners and got a pretty generous stash of prizes, one of which was two tickets to Kings Island, one of the amusement parks here in Ohio. The last time I was on a roller coaster was probably 2003, but I particularly remember riding Son of Beast, a wooden roller coaster that doesn’t even exist anymore. The ride was so rough that it felt like my brains were going to rattle right out of my head. And since I have a legitimate problem with my brain, roller coasters are off the grid altogether. When I saw those tickets I knew I wasn’t going to use them because I know I don’t ever need to ride a roller coaster again.

Two months before I was diagnosed, I went to interior Alaska with my aunt, my cousin, and a friend of mine on a trip of a lifetime to see the Northern Lights and celebrate my fortieth birthday early. We stayed at a luxury resort in December, in igloos (not the ice kind!) where we could lie in bed and see the aurora borealis. It was an incredible trip: dogsledding, hanging out with reindeer, a helicopter ride through the White Mountains, and then a six-hour snowmobile trip partially along the Alaska Pipeline and then up into the mountains again. On the bottom, I wore insulated leggings, insulated hiking pants, ski pants, and Carhartt coveralls. On top, I wore an insulated shirt, a fleece jacket, the inner lining of my winter coat, and then the outer portion, with the coveralls on top of that. I had insulated socks and boots rated for minus forty degrees, and another pair of boots the resort provided on top of that, plus two layers of gloves, a neck gaiter, and I don’t even know what to protect my ears and my head. It ended up being minus twenty-something degrees that day. We got back, and I got off that snowmobile and thought, “I don’t ever need to do that again.”

I’m second from the left, in case you can’t tell.
This is the kind of cold that my family refers to 
as 'snot-freezing cold.'

I am a seminary dropout. I took a single class in the fall of 2023, just as a trial run to see if I wanted to pursue another master’s degree. It’s confirmed: I don’t. The class was a survey of the New Testament. I was particularly restless and bored at that time in life, feeling like I was sleepwalking through life. I wrote about it shortly after the diagnosis in early 2024. I thought maybe some more rigorous intellectual input would help ease the boredom. I could have audited the class and done no assignments, but I thought that if this ultimately helped fulfill the vague something I was looking for, I didn’t want the class to be a waste, so I signed up as if it were a traditional class, with writing assignments and all. I don’t even remember what the final paper was, but it felt grueling. I remembered finishing my first master’s sixteen years ago and being reminded of how much I despise academic writing; this paper sealed the deal yet again. I finished that paper and told myself, “I don’t ever want to write another paper again in my life.” For real this time.

I went to see the Christian recording artist Brandon Lake last October for my birthday. I’ve never been much of a concert-goer to begin with—minus Ben Rector, who holds a special place in my heart—but I do enjoy Brandon’s music and decided to go. Thank God the man sitting in front of me was in his sixties, if not seventies, and chose to sit most of the time. One reason I don’t ever want to go to another Ohio State football game is that everybody stands almost the entire game, and I get sick of standing. I’d much rather sit at home and watch the game in a temperature-controlled environment. But especially now, I really struggle in loud environments and places with lots of visual commotion, even in restaurants. I took my noise-canceling headphones, and if I took them out for even one verse of a song, my body would get overwhelmed. My brain literally cannot handle things like that anymore. When I first started going to the new church I’m at, they have multiple overhead fans, and I genuinely thought I might not make it through the service with both the air and visual movement. So I left that concert realizing I don’t ever need to go to another concert again.

I’ve never been much of a drinker—minus amaretto sours, which barely even land in the realm of alcohol. However, I can still appreciate the art form of making things like bourbon without needing to partake. I oddly enjoy touring distilleries, which I’ve done once with my mom and once with my brother. My mom and I went on a tour of a couple of thoroughbred farms down near Lexington and also toured a distillery. We tasted a few of the options, and when I say “tasted,” I mean we basically could have dipped our tongues in the glasses, and it would have been more than enough. It was so appalling to us. We got the giggles so badly, and then my mom cracked a joke about something. The poor bartender was so caught off guard by whatever the joke was that she was in stitches behind the bar and ended up on the floor. I actually got off my barstool to peek over the edge and see if she was okay; she was down there for so long. All of us had tears streaming down our faces. We’d try another kind, as the bartender assured us they were all different—smoother, fuller, or whatever words are used to describe bourbon. My mom and I would try the next option, thinking, “Well, maybe this one will be the one that isn’t so disgusting.” Nope, still disgusting. And then the giggles would start all over again. I went on to tour Buffalo Trace later that fall with one of my brothers. It’s confirmed: I don’t ever need to drink bourbon again.

We are hopelessly hilarious bourbon drinkers,
serving as each other’s entertainment.

It’s been liberating to acknowledge not just the items above, but so many other things I’ve spent years minimizing, excusing, or trying to push through, some of which has been informed or deepened by these last two years of navigating a cancer diagnosis and treatment. I read an excerpt from a book years ago that was quite profound. Julia Keller wrote a book called Quitting: A Life Strategy, the Myth of Perseverance—And How the New Science of Giving Up Can Set You Free. In it, she wrote, "Human beings are the only creatures who quit and then stew over it, writing self-flagellating social media posts, confessing doubts to friends over cocktails, calling ourselves names as we stare mournfully in the mirror.”

I’m finding this notion of quitting quite satisfying, realizing there are a lot of things that I don’t ever need to do again. I’d be curious to hear - anything you’ve finally acknowledged you don’t ever need to do again? Maybe your own wisdom will spare me from doing things I don’t ever need to do again.

Christ Be All Around Me, Including the Bathroom Floor

Short and sweet health update: I had an MRI this past Monday. The tumor is stable, which is the goal, and my next scan is in December.

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I couldn’t have known at the time, but I texted a friend—one who had gone through her own form of a cataclysmic health crisis—the morning of February 7, 2024, at 7:05 a.m., two days after my brain biopsy, and wrote, “Last night wasn’t a great night. I felt like I was on the verge of a seizure all night without actually having one. Around 5:00 a.m., I woke up with this thought, and you came to mind: I think I’m about to fully discover for myself what Nightbirde meant when she said, ‘God is on the bathroom floor.’” 

By that same afternoon, my neuro-oncologist walked into my hospital room and shared—my tumor was, in fact, cancerous. My words had unfortunately been prophetic. There would be no escaping the bathroom floor kind of season on its way.

To fully understand this text, you need to know who Nightbirde was. Her real name was Jane Marczewski, and she first hit the public’s radar when she performed an original song, “It’s OK,” on America’s Got Talent in June 2021. She stunned the judges with her performance—so much so that Simon Cowell reached for the Golden Buzzer and sent gold confetti raining down around her. She had an ethereal, light quality to her voice, and her backstory deepened the gravity of the song: "I was a stick of dynamite and it just was a matter of time."

Her backstory was this: she had cancer in her lungs, spine, and liver, and she was working hard to keep her health on track at the time of the performance. Even with the Golden Buzzer, she had to withdraw from the competition in August because her health had deteriorated so much. She ultimately died months later in February 2022.

I remember watching that performance, similarly stunned by both her beauty and her voice. Like most people, I immediately turned to the internet to find out more about her. One of the first things I discovered was a blog post she had written in March 2021, titled “God is on the Bathroom Floor.” I read it with tears in my eyes as she recounted the toll the cancer was taking on her mind and body. Her writing style was compelling and emotionally gripping. In some ways, I was jealous of how good of a writer she was. I printed off a copy of the post and kept tucked it in the front of my journal for years, just because, as a writer, I wanted to aspire to that kind of storytelling. I certainly didn’t want her story as a way to get there—but as it turns out, I did receive that kind of story. Only it became one all my own.

Thus, the 7:05 a.m. text to my friend, in which I said I felt like I was about to enter my own “bathroom floor” season. For two years now, I’ve mulled over how to write a blog post that somehow matched Jane’s and the imagery she used—proof that, somehow, my story might be worthy. I fabricated an arbitrary benchmark as a writer and storyteller. I wondered if there was a way to put a quippy spin on her title, but everything I thought of sounded lame, like I was trying too hard. 

I was trying to put a square peg in a round hole. 

And that peg just.would.not.go.in.

It finally occurred to me that I could not write what Jane wrote. 

I needed to stop trying to put the square peg in the round hole. That bathroom floor was all hers, not mine. I simply could not fully relate to what she wrote. Did I spend some time on the bathroom floor? You bet I did. Other than a few bits, though, her post holds little reflection of my own experience. There was no spin to be had.

I never called God a cheat or a liar, and I was never bitter.

I was never cynical, angry, hardened, or offended. By the grace of God, those were simply not components or facets of my story.

It’s okay that she felt those things. And that I didn't. Neither story has anything to prove. There is no “God is on the Bathroom Floor” post for me. If anything, it would probably be “God is in the MRI Machine” because that always seemed to be this oddly sweet place that God would send me songs that would speak precisely to something I needed to be encouraged about or reminded of. This latest MRI included Ayanda Khumalo’s song “Psalm 18,” on which I am hooked.

The reality is that Christ is in me—and all around me. The bathroom floor. The MRI tube. The surgical table. The ER. The gym. My house. My parents’ house. My office floor. There is nowhere I go that he is not.

My friend texted later that fateful morning in response, “Dear friend, I have been there; on that bathroom floor with God nearby. You may be getting ready to enter into your bathroom floor season, but what I know and trust is that HE will be with you in every moment.”

Indeed, Christ was—and is—all around me, including the bathroom floor.

"Where can I go from your Spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn,

if I settle on the far side of the sea,

even there your hand will guide me,

your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me

and the light become night around me,”

even the darkness will not be dark to you;

the night will shine like the day,

for darkness is as light to you." (Psalm 139:7-12)

Yesterday’s Yes Isn’t Enough

I had a clear line of sight to the man. The poor guy. From the back of the room, I could tell he was nearly beside himself—pacing, stopping, praying, fidgeting. He clearly was having some sort of moment. Within the hour, I would discover that all that pacing and praying were merely an introduction to one of the wildest moments of my own life.

I lived in San Diego for ten weeks between my sophomore and junior years of college. About 120 college students from across the country gathered to serve coworkers and share the love of Christ with other college students at many of San Diego’s major universities. The vast majority of us worked at SeaWorld San Diego, but a handful found jobs through their own connections. It was an accelerated, intense time of leadership development and spiritual growth. That summer radically formed the foundation of my walk with Christ.

One particular night, the staff hosted what we called the International Dinner. It was a time to draw attention to the various corners of the world that did not have access to the gospel through a very unique object lesson. Students were divided into groups and assigned a country, each group situated in areas within a large multipurpose room at a local church. I and about eight other students were assigned to Russia and situated off to the side of the room. One group of students was assigned to a country I can’t even recall and was relegated to a closet, out of sight and entirely separated from everyone else. Another group was assigned to America and placed on a platform in the center of the room. The remaining students were split into various other countries. The memories are hazy, as I can’t even recall what the goal was, but somehow I know I was trying to figure out how to “leave” Russia and kept running into roadblocks, all while I watched the Americans being served a lavish meal of steaks and all the fixings. I think I may have had access to some crackers. Best I could tell, the people in the closet weren’t getting anything. What happened to dinner? I wondered to myself.

The rumpled 21-year old invitation to
the most unexpected moment of my life.

At first, I wasn’t picking up on the object lesson—all I wanted was some food that was more substantial than what I was getting. As the evening progressed, however, I could tell the light bulbs were going off one by one for each of us, a slow dawning as the comparisons sank in—the Americans were up on the platform with an abundance of food, while the rest of the spacious room had varying levels of access to food. But the revelation wasn’t just about who had the most food, but a much deeper spiritual reality: who was able to “feast” on the Word of God and how easily they were able to do that.

I could tell the energy in the room was shifting dramatically to a much deeper, more desperate quality as we all rapidly processed that this night was turning out to be nothing like we had anticipated. It was clear none of us saw this object lesson coming.

Afterward, we had a large-group debriefing time. I honestly don’t remember whether I ate a meal that night or not. By that point, it didn’t matter. What was clear was that the presence of the Holy Spirit was moving in our midst.

Enter the poor guy from the beginning, standing off to the side, and me, sitting in the back. The guy’s real name was Dustin. I barely knew him. I had been around him maybe twice in group settings, and I don’t think we’d even had so much as a one-on-one conversation. In fact, we were already several weeks into the summer when all of this unfolded. We must have been doing some kind of icebreaker when we first crossed paths, because I do recall him mentioning that he felt God was calling him to go to Turkey one day. So, I knew that much about him.

As the debriefing continued that night, I was feeling the power and weight of the moment myself. I was praying and listening deeply to the staff director as he talked about God’s heart for the nations, but I kept watching Dustin fidget. He would lean against the wall, close his eyes, apparently deep in prayer. Then he’d open his eyes and pace a few steps. His body just kept moving. I knew something was up, and that the night seemed to be hitting him differently than it was most of us. The rest of us were seated in chairs, almost afraid to move and somehow break the spiritual presence that had fallen. Not Dustin. The boy was all over the place in his own little zone.

Then I got an unmistakable impression in my spirit, like pressure in my chest and a total-body flush:

Tell Dustin to go to Turkey.

My heart immediately started racing, followed by a frenzied, skeptical dialogue with God. No way am I telling this guy to go to Turkey—I barely know him. That would be weird.

Tell Dustin to go to Turkey.

Sorry, God, ain’t happening. Find somebody else.

Tell Dustin to go to Turkey.

Tell Dustin to go to Turkey.

Tell Dustin to go to Turkey.

It was an inescapable refrain in my heart and mind, all within the span of minutes. My palms were sweating at this point. What was I supposed to do—just waltz over to this guy, who was essentially a stranger, and say, “Hey, I know we don’t really know each other, but God told me to tell you to go to Turkey”? That’s crazy talk. But the command was relentless, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was of God.

So I relented and agreed. Fine, I’ll go over once the director is done speaking. I was hoping that somehow, between now and then, God would alter the course. The director wrapped up and dismissed us. People got up to move around and talk some more. I was zeroed in on Dustin because I didn’t want to lose sight of him in the crowd. My eyes tracked him, and he disappeared out the balcony door. My heart was pounding, and I really didn’t want to be the freak who delivered this message to him out of the blue. I followed him out, and I could tell he was still in a state of angst. He was leaning on the balcony rail, darkness all around except for the glow from the interior lights. I walked over and stood next to him, with a good foot or so between us. It felt weird to get too close, and he wasn’t really aware of my presence yet either.

I piped up, hoping not to startle him out of whatever zone he was in. “Dustin, I have something I need to tell you, but it can wait, and I can just tell you when we get back to the condos.”

“No, no, go ahead and tell me now.”

Dang, I had hoped I would be off the hook.

“You need to go to Turkey,” I said matter-of-factly, without introduction or explanation.

I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head, his mouth opening wider and wider, like he’d been struck dumb.

He responded, “I literally had been praying just now that God would send someone to tell me to go to Turkey.”

Now it was my turn for my eyes to pop out of my head and for my mouth to hang open.

What on earth was happening?

We went back inside eventually and the story spread quickly, as we were all still gathered and students were milling about. What had God just done through the power of the Holy Spirit? Dustin was in disbelief. I was in disbelief. Everyone else was in disbelief. The night had already been intense, and then this catapulted us into the outer stratosphere of intense. I kept hugging him. He kept hugging me. A strange bond formed between us in that moment—the message-giver and the message-receiver linked by a crazy, God-ordained moment.

Something like that had never happened to me before that night, and it has never happened since.

It’s easy to want to linger in those spiritual high moments, isn’t it? To be like Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17 and ask Jesus if we can pitch tents and stay. Those moments don’t come around very often. Clearly. But that’s where a lot of us long to be all the time, don’t we? We want to find ourselves camped out in the moments that astound us, leaving us in awe and wonder. We don’t want to traverse the valleys ever again.

For years after, I kept longing for that kind of moment again, like I had with Dustin—and ultimately with God. Moments when you know undeniably what God is asking of you. For sure, there have been numerous times when God has made it clear to me what I needed to do in certain circumstances and relationships, but never with that kind of unique quality.

And that has often been a barrier in my relationship with God: wanting to somehow go back to the good ol’ days. My college years in general were some of the most intense years of my life, not just that summer. So many moments with Jesus in those years, packed with fresh revelation, understanding, growth, and unparalleled community and fellowship with other believers. Those were legitimately good days for me.

And here this summer, I find myself not so much longing for those college days specifically, but certainly longing for last summer, albeit not physically. I’m definitely glad chemo is behind me, but spiritually speaking, last summer held its own kind of sweetness. A year ago, I was heading into my final rounds of chemo, and I found myself protective of my time and attention. And God met me in such a tender time. I didn’t watch any TV or movies last summer. I didn’t blog. I cut out a lot of things. I focused for months on a study on the life of Elijah as I felt myself relating in so many ways, feeling like I was being hidden in my own ravine with God. Revelations were pouring out, and God was clearly speaking to me through his Word. Everything felt fresh and alive in a way that I had not experienced in a long time.

But I can’t keep feeding off what once was. As the lyrics go in one of Anna Golden’s new songs, “Yesterday’s yes won’t get me where I need to go.” Yesterday’s yes isn’t enough to sustain me today. I need a fresh surrender. I can acknowledge that that crazy moment from twenty-one years ago, standing on a balcony and telling a boy to go to Turkey, was incredible. And I can acknowledge that last summer—and countless other unmentioned moments in my walk with God—was incredible in its own way.

But they can’t be the bread that feeds me today. All the yeses from yesterday aren’t enough.

I need a fresh surrender. I can’t copy and paste my walk with God. Each day, I have to draw on fresh manna, just as the ancient Israelites did as they wandered the wilderness. We are all in our own kind of wilderness as we tread this planet. Your yesterday’s yes to God can’t be today’s yes. You’ll find it’s not enough, no matter how much you might wish it could be. That’s why it’s called daily bread. So, no more copying and pasting, deal?

These memories don't really serve me

I get lost trying to track down a feeling

Thought the silence meant that you stopped speaking

So I got tired of all the waiting

And I recycled revelation

And I'm sorry to say it but I thought I'd be ok this way

Don't wanna burn with second hand fire

Strike the match ignite my bones

Yesterdays yes won't get me where I need to go (where I need to go)

I need a fresh wind sweeping through the temple

I need fresh oil on my head

I can't live off yesterday's manna

I need that daily bread

Can I really call them ebenezers

When I don't call you when I need ya

What good's remembering what you've done if

I don't trust what you can do next

I've made an idol out of good things

I call you Jireh but I trust me

I won't see the ram just hiding in the thicket if I'm not not listening

Can't copy and paste this

Phone it in fake it

I need a fresh surrender

Thinking I made it

Calling it sacred

I need a fresh surrender

My Words Will Die With Me

I was delighted to learn that author Tish Harrison Warren burns her words. In her latest book, What Grows in Weary Lands, she describes a tradition that began unintentionally with her first book. At the end of the publication process she winds up with a full copy of her manuscript—printed but unbound, with her handwritten edits. Near the end of that process for her first book, she realized she would have a ream of paper she couldn’t really use, and it didn’t feel right to toss it in the recycling, so she burned it. Thus the personal tradition of burning her words was born.

With the manuscript for Weary Lands, the tradition continued. She and her husband lit their backyard fire pit, poured champagne, and began tossing pages into the flames. They thanked God it was over, prayed for the people who would read it, and watched page by page turn to ash.

She wrote: “It has become a happy tradition over the years. And a dual symbol for me. On one hand, all those printed words ascending in smoke feel like a prayer in themselves. All these ideas and sentences, both lovely and faulted—this editing and effort, self-disclosure and self-doubt, worries and words—rising to God like the incense we burn in church each Sunday, curling and twisting toward heaven. There’s something glorious about it” (142).

I don’t have a manuscript to burn, but I did a variation on this theme with someone else’s words—emphasis on the symbolism—after a dating relationship ended fourteen years ago. The man I was dating knew my love of words and showered me with them in the form of handwritten cards. We dated for about eight months, so I had a modest collection when the end came. I would have ended the relationship myself, but he beat me to it. Deep down I was relieved; over time I saw a significant mismatch on many levels, and I was okay when the relationship ended.

After things ended, I gathered up the notes and cards, walked out to my parents’ fire pit, and lit a match. (Well, I probably lit a lot of matches; my fire-starting skills are not great.) I burned the cards in small stacks, slowly, until they were gone, watching paper and words turn to ash. This wasn’t an act of defiant severance—it was much deeper. It was my own quiet, symbolic way of letting go. I knew that if I held on to those words I would be tempted to re-read them, “to taste life twice,” as Anaïs Nin put it. I would keep reliving the past and all those emotions—and I knew it wouldn’t be healthy. But, like Warren and her husband, I prayed over those letters—asking that every one my ex had written be returned to me a hundredfold by a future husband, a man who would be a significant match for me. In its own small way, there was something glorious about those words, rising to God like incense—my prayers along with them.

Warren went on to write about her word-burning tradition, reflecting that while there is something glorious about it, there is 

at the same time something sad—something that admits futility, that speaks of our long defeat. These flames remind me that all of my effort, struggle, failures, and successes end in death. All these hours of work—early mornings, headaches, drafts, tears, cursing at the rafters, and small moments of triumph—turn to ash. They go up in smoke and are gone. I cannot make them last. Years of my life, thousands of words . . . it blows away with the shifting wind (142).

I signed an updated version of my will yesterday. It included a specific stipulation that all my personal journals are to be burned—twenty-one volumes as of now, dating back to January 1, 1997. My original will named two friends for the duty. I had joked with them for years about leaving them with the task of burning my journals, then I stopped joking and legitimately included it in my will, which I signed in late 2023. I recently decided that was unfair, so I asked my oldest brother to do it, and he agreed. My other brother is responsible for deleting my digital words—removing this blog and taking it off the internet. I don’t know the hour or day when I will meet Jesus, but it will come; when it does, I have deliberately chosen that all my words go up in smoke, whether actual smoke or some kind of cyber-smoke. There will be a day when years of my life—thousands, if not millions, of words—will blow away, so to speak, with the shifting wind. I won’t last—and neither will they. We will both turn to dust and ash: flames that burn for a while and then flicker and die.

However, there are words that do last forever. I have long believed that heaven will have a spectacular library based on the beautiful words in John 21:25: "Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” For those who go to heaven, I believe that we will read all those books that the world supposedly did not have room for.

My words will die along with me—as will every word ever written by anyone, anywhere, at any point in history—every book, blog post, tweet, newspaper, magazine, script, and email—every version of words you can think of—will someday be lost to the end of the ages. They won’t even survive as distant memories, relics, or artifacts. All of them will blow away with the shifting wind. But for those who are in Christ, the shifting wind will carry us home to Jesus Christ in heaven.

And when I reach heaven, I’ll settle in for some good books filled with good words. Words that last forever.

“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever" (Isaiah 40:6b-8).

From the Archives: Be Still and Move

There is the occasion when the Lord brings to mind some of my own writings from the past, things I need to be reminded of, truths I need to hear again. Moments of sanctification in the Christian life are rarely one-and-done. It’s more like multiple-times-over-and-never-done. God isn’t afraid to keep bringing us back to the same places time and again so that we can be shaped into the likeness of Christ.

Tonight he reminded of a moment I had almost nine years ago and then the corresponding post I wrote. I had moved into my first apartment in August of 2014. I had a pretty significant mental health crisis in September 2017, and I moved out of that apartment to move back home to live with my parents for a time. It is lightly edited for time references.

Perhaps there are others out there who need this reminder—not just me.

—————————

I remember when I first moved into my teeny-tiny apartment.  My dad thought I was moving into a glorified walk-in closet, and my mom was concerned about whether I was going to crazy in such a small place.

I, on the other hand, loved my little corner of the world, all 350 rambling square feet of it.  I used to dream of living in a lavish house when I grew up, but then I traveled around the world a few times and discovered that there wasn't a whole heck of a lot I needed in order to live.  Some books, some clothes, my bed, a small kitchen, a functional bathroom, and enough elbow room to turn around in a small circle and I'm good to go.  And that is pretty much exactly what I got when I moved into my studio apartment in 2014.

I had no internet, no cable, no microwave, and I unashamedly loved it that way. I didn't bother using drinking glasses because I always just drank straight out of whatever carton or container the drink came in. I never closed the bathroom door. I had a 23" TV, which my parents gave to me for my 30th birthday, along with a magnifying glass, because my dad had no idea how I was going to see anything on such a small screen. When you're used to 60" screens, yes, 23" does seem a touch under-sized. I had a dorm-sized refrigerator with a freezer the size of a glove compartment, so I learned to eat a lot healthier and better because, quite simply, frozen meals were not an option when your freezer was generally pretty worthless. There were exactly five (six, if you count the bed, which didn't technically belong to me) pieces of furniture to my name in that space - three bookshelves, one recliner, and a desk.  I lived exactly 0.6 miles from work, 0.2 miles from the local library, 0.4 miles from my gym, 0.8 miles from my favorite park, and 1.7 miles from my favorite pie joint - Just Pies.  I had two windows, which was one more window than pretty much everyone else in the building.  I specifically held out for a corner apartment and paid extra for it, just so I could have that additional window.  I wanted as much light as possible.

I had a string of crazy neighbors that nearly did me in.  The last one was not only a fan of playing his guitar at all hours, but he never quite understood the purpose of a garbage disposal.  Dude, it's for grinding up your scraps, not your entire refrigerator.  I lost track of the number of times my kitchen sink and bathtub backed up with all sorts of crud and black sludge all because this guy couldn't seem to get a clue.

Despite the paper thin door and the neighbors I prayed God would somehow cause to move elsewhere, I loved that space.  I loved that neighborhood.  I loved living near the library.  I loved walking to the park in the summer.  I loved having a small space to call all my own.  I loved walking to the farmer's market.  I loved being able to drive home over my lunch breaks and take cat naps.  

I lived a lot of life in that apartment.  I experienced one of the hardest seasons of my life in that apartment.  I cried a lot in that apartment.  I wrote a lot in that apartment.

I encountered Jesus in that apartment.

And then—then it was all over.

I was learning that God quite literally uproots us from our places of comfort to see to it that we don't miss what he has planned next for us.  I think I would have stayed in that apartment for years without questioning it.  I would have stayed because it was comfortable, and it was convenient, and it was easy.  Sometimes he uproots us in order to see to it that we don't miss the promised land.  It's what he said to Abraham in Genesis 12:1, "Go...to the land I will show you."  Sometimes we have to leave the places we love to go to places not yet named.  In the wake of the upheaval that was happening at the time, I just kept sensing God say to me, "Move."  And then after awhile it became, "MOVE."  I didn't understand it at the time. I didn't understand this command to quite literally move out of the physical space I was living in, a space that I loved, but was now a place of deep anxiety for me. I started to have a very physical response to my apartment when I would go there. I started staying with my parents because I couldn't handle being alone at night, but even when I would stop by my apartment to pick up some things or grab clothes for the gym, I would walk into it and suddenly feel desperate to get out of there. It was such a mystery to me.  

When the Israelites of the Old Testament were escaping from their centuries of slavery in Egypt, marching out boldly, they were heading out to a land they had not yet named, this was place that was unknown and uncertain. And it didn't take long for the fears to settle in.

The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, so that he pursued the Israelites, who were marching out boldly.  The Egyptians—all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots, horsemen and troops—pursued the Israelites and overtook them as they camped by the sea near Pi Hahiroth, opposite Baal Zephon. 

As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt?  Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” 

Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again.  The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” 

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on (Exodus 14:8-15).

One of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith is that we must simultaneously be still and move.  It is not an either/or state of being, but rather a both/and.  It's also not a matter of sequence, that we are first still and then we move, or vice versa.

The Word of God commands us to be still.  Psalm 46 leaves no doubt about that.  "Be still, and know that I am God," he commands in verse 10.  Be still.  Set your heart at rest and be still.  Sink down, relax, tell your heart to let go, and be still.  Psalm 37:7 says, "Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him."  Silence the noise, and put a damper on all the racket in your head, and be still.  

It's what Moses commands the people to do.  "Do not be afraid," he declares, "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."  

And as Moses declares over the people, "Be still," God follows shortly thereafter with "Move."  

That's the part we like to leave out.  

Stop crying out to me and move.

As much as the Word of God commands us to be still, it also unequivocally tells us to move. Forward motion counts in the kingdom of God just as much as being still does. Paul exhorts us in Philippians 3:13-14: "But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."  To the paralytic, Jesus said, "Take up your mat and walk."  To the adulteress, he said, "Leave your life of sin."  To the cripple, he said, "Stretch out your hand."  To Lazarus, he said, "Come forth!"  To the servants at the wedding, he said, "Fill the jars."  Jesus, more often than not, was always telling people to move.  

If we are to commit our lives to Jesus, and to have any hope of following in his footsteps, then we must figure out what it looks to simultaneously be still and move.  We must figure out what it means to set our hearts at rest, to know he is God, and trust he is in complete and loving control.  We must set aside our desire for control and certainty and rational explanations as to why God ordains what he does for our lives.  But we must also figure out how to keep pressing on, to quit our complaining and whining, to get our eyes off the end of our own noses, and move.  In my case, that literally meant packing up my bags and moving all of my possessions, even if I didn't understand. Your version of move may look different.  But whatever our relative circumstances, we must simultaneously move, while still setting our hearts at rest.  

I stood in the door frame of my apartment that morning, my hand resting on the door knob, the door cracked halfway. I stole one last glance, noticing the sunlight filling up a space that was now empty, blank, and echo-y, with nothing in it to absorb the noise. I quietly closed the door, slipped the key into the lock one last time, twisted it, felt the bolt click into place.

Then I turned and walked away.

Be still and move.

The Stories of Undramatic Seasons

I started a note of possible blog topics on my phone when I was diagnosed in February 2024: ideas, titles, single sentences, paragraphs—each a little seed waiting to be planted. I added to it every day; there was so much going on in my head that the note eventually grew long enough to require several swipes to reach the bottom. Those topics burned within me once, and yet never made it beyond that note.

Those topics no longer burn within me, so the list of ideas has languished for nearly two years. The note isn’t even on my phone anymore—I moved it off the cloud and onto to my laptop. I haven’t added to it in quite some time. It still surfaces in my thoughts, though. I often debate forcing myself to resurrect it and pick an item to write about, but that kind of writing never yields anything good for me. A chore merely to be done.

My most prolific writing times are when I’m off on traveling adventures or in a profound spiritual crisis. On the desktop version of the blog you can view the archives in the left column, a year-by-year count of my posts. My wordiest years were 2010–2012 (150 posts cumulatively) and then 2024-2025 (75 posts cumulatively). On the other end of the spectrum, however, in other multi-year stretches, I was lucky if I posted in the low double-digits. Some individual years, I didn’t even make it out the single digits. Between 2010 and 2012, I was went to Kenya twice—those trips released a steady flow of stories and reflections. And most of you know how 2024-25 went: writing these last two years has been like breathing—an unparalleled volume of words rose from wells deep within; I was in a writing zone all of its own.

Now it’s 2026, and that well of words seems to have run dry, which is why it has maybe seemed like crickets around here. No crisis. No traveling. Just the steady state of living. That’s not to say there isn’t anything happening in my life. There’s the return of the buzzards. (My free morning entertainment has finally migrated back.)  There’s the shenanigans of a dumb baby groundhog that strayed into my garage—just last night!—that I spent far too long trying to capture and return him back to the wild. (He eventually made his way out after some exhaustion on both sides.) There’s wedding cookie table “university". (Who knew, right?) I am back to driving again after my last seizure in March. (My days as an adult teenager are now over.) And, of course, there’s always my health. (Hello, perimenopause! By all means, yes, please pull up a seat at the table. So not glad you are here.) 

But words? They have been hard to come by, as has motivation at large. Anything that even remotely hits the slightest tremor on the writing Richter scale feels ordinary and uninspired, dictated by an unspoken threshold in my mind for what is worthy and unworthy to write about. I haven’t even been writing in my own personal journals, let alone for a public audience.

I don’t know that I have ever pre-ordered a book before in my life, but if there are things registering on Tish Harrison Warren’s writing Richter scale, I’m reading it. She released her new book What Grows In Weary Lands: On Christian Resilience earlier this week. I pre-ordered it back in January. I honestly forgot I did, so when it arrived this week, current me thanked past me for the surprise. (Let me tell ya, it’s a real walk in the park when you hit midlife and brain cancer all at the same time.) The prologue and the first chapter alone were worth the buy because she might as well have taken the words right out of my own brain. 

There was one particular snippet that immediately jumped off the page for me, the nudge to finally sit down and write this very post. She writes about how she had been in a season of extreme weariness, running on fumes. She shared about how she had gotten into a fight with her husband and daughter and stormed out of the house. She went for a drive and at one point just cried out into the void at God, “I don’t know what to do!” She then drove home, put her kids to bed, made amends with her daughter and husband, and went to sleep. What struck me was her next line: "And in our moment in history, such an ending to this small story does not seem brave or profound or worthwhile. Because of this, we end up not telling the stories of these weary yet undramatic seasons—unless those stories end in a total dismantling and reinvention of our lives.”

Who wants to hear about the day in and day out realities of laundry, working the same job for thirteen years, spending a Friday night, single, home alone, catching a groundhog stuck in your garage, and paying bills? Monotony is just that—monotonous. The same is true in the spiritual landscape. Praying for that one particular person for thirteen years? Reading the same verses for your whole life and still not able to fully recall them? Going to church every Sunday, only to find you’re still struggling with some of the same sins and vices? Bor-ing. Who wants to sit down and watch those scenes? 

Eugene Peterson says it well in his book A Long Obedience in the Same Direction:

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness. Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site to be made when we have adequate leisure.

A long obedience in the same direction means there are stories we don’t tell because quiet, day-to-day living and faithfulness isn’t glamorous. I have been captured by a tourist mindset of my own life, believing my life and my writing were valuable because they were sensational in their own right, worth tuning in for, which is disturbingly and embarrassingly self-absorbed.

Day-to-day faithfulness isn’t glamorous. And yet that day-to-day is where we spend our lives. It’s the liminal space between the high highs and low lows of life that we tread the most—and that space between is where we acquire that thing called holiness. It’s often quiet and unnoticed, unhurried, a “patient acquisition,” and a “long apprenticeship,” as Peterson said.

Perhaps the ordinary act of watching buzzards each morning—finding God’s care even in ugly birds—is as valuable as the extraordinary act of listening to a neuro‑oncologist tell me I have rare brain cancer—and still believe in God’s care for me in an ugly diagnosis. Both shape my long obedience toward God and holiness; both contribute to spiritual growth if I have eyes to see them.

We each have our stories of undramatic seasons, but may they each be part of a much larger story being told of not only our patient acquisition of holiness, but also of the God who is sovereign over that patient acquisition—and is willing to wait for us.

General Update: Life As An Adult Teenager

It’s strange to live independently and still have to message my parents to ask if one of them can take me to the grocery store or the gym. After that humdinger of a seizure a couple weeks ago, I’m not allowed to drive for the time being. If the first seizure I had in February 2024 was the worst, this one ranks a solid number two—though it caused far less emotional chaos. I scraped my shoulder enough to draw blood and it then scabbed over within a day. I expected nasty bruising, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. The goose egg on the back of my head lasted a while, but it’s gone now.

I did discover more damage to my lamp than I first noticed. I knew I’d shoved it into the wall—there was a ding right away—but it wasn’t until the next day that my mom noticed the globe had sheared off from the bronze post. Even now, two weeks later, I discovered a broken piece of glass still sits inside the globe; I vacuumed up shards today that I hadn’t seen before. I’m hoping there are no more belated discoveries from this seizure, mainly within my own body.

The poor thing. It was my grandmother’s lamp,
several decades old. In a matter of seconds, I bust it in
multiple places.

After the seizure, I reached out to my neuro-oncologist to see about moving up my quarterly MRI. I was slated to have it next week anyway, so it wasn’t a giant leap to adjust it by a couple of weeks. I had the MRI this past Thursday, which showed that the tumor is stable and showed no signs of growth. I had asked if there were any additional imaging we could do that would help identify any potential issues. The radiologist indicated that given the kind of imaging we do for my tumor anyway, he would be able to see if anything significant happened to the back of my head. 

My neuro-onc is able to read all imaging directly, so as soon as I finished the MRI, I went up directly to his office to discuss results. I’m grateful that my doctor can do this and that we don’t have to wait around for anything. A radiologist still does a formal report, which confirmed the neuro-onc’s findings.

I did have a bit of a challenge trying to get in touch with my seizure specialist, which was rather maddening, but then through an act of God, I was able to get an online appointment scheduled with him this past Monday. This truly was an answer to pray because normally this doctor is booked five and six months out. I was praying about it late last week, just asking God for there to be an opening to have an appointment with the doctor as I had a lot of questions for him that I wasn’t readily getting from his staff via MyChart. 

I jokingly wore my bicycle helmet to the first
team meeting after the seizure

Miraculously, when I called, the scheduler said they just had a cancellation for (this past) Monday at 10:40 am. I was stunned. I joked with the lady, “Please push that button now to schedule before someone else takes it!” So, I was also able to meet with the seizure specialist. (Side note—I’ve called him my ‘seizure doc’ for two years now, but when I read his latest report, I saw all his titles in the footer. He is formally an epileptologist, but I think I’ll stick with 'seizure doc.' Even autocorrect thinks that word isn’t real.) I really appreciate this doctor and he’s one of my favorites, so I am incredibly grateful that God made a way for me to speak with him directly. My mom also joined me, but sat off to the side, writing notes, cueing me to ask him. Perhaps yet another moment as an adult teenager, like passing notes in school, although this most certainly is not your normal science class.

I do notice some subtle signs of clumsiness in my left hand and leg that I feel like were not there previously, but I also know my body has been incredibly tense ever since the seizure. I went to see my ‘neuro-muscular guy’—again, I don’t know what his official title is—because I felt like my neck was a mess, and I wanted him to check things. I ended up having a bit of a cry while lying there on the table, my neck hurting so bad while he massaged it and adjusted it. It sounded like gunfire when he adjusted it.

I keep telling people two things: 

1) I am incredibly grateful once again for all the ways God has protected and provided, and 

2) I am not where I was two years ago. Yeah, it’s a bummer this happened, but this has not been a descent into a vortex of grief. I am in a totally different space mentally, emotionally, and physically. 

But let the record show—I will not be asking to come off one of my seizure meds for a very long time.

It’s Not Good—But It’s a Good Story. I Think.

 If you were to ask me what the most traumatic memories from the last two years are, they would undoubtedly include memories of seizures and rehab appointments. The seizures were so wildly unpredictable that I constantly felt as if I were on the edge of a cliff. And not just on the edge of a cliff, but specifically on a volcanic cliff where I might not only fall off, but the volcano might simultaneously erupt, blowing everything to bits with hot lava and blinding ash. Even the last few routine appointments with my seizure doctor were invariably filled with tears as I talked about how emotional those memories were for me. Every time I had a seizure, the clock would reset on when I could drive again, pushing independence farther and farther away.

In a similarly emotional vein, rehab appointments were where I was consistently confronted grief over physical and cognitive loss, realizing that my body and brain were no longer what they once had been. I remember the occupational therapist handing me a one-pound dumbbell—one pound—to see if I could hold it in my left hand and rotate it at the wrist. I couldn’t do it. The speech therapist handed me a worksheet where I was supposed to draw hands on a clock according to the time listed. I got them wrong. I would leave sessions exhausted, ready to go home and sleep.

Rehab has long been in the rearview mirror, and I have now moved over to a gym setting. I’m still confronted by loss there, but not with the emotional force that rehab carried. I suspect the left side of my body will always be weak and uncoordinated, particularly my hand and arm. I’m still coming to terms with that in some ways. I can now draw hands on a clock, although mental math is a bit of a challenge. Perhaps the government did me a favor by eliminating the penny, and businesses are now rounding to the closest five cents. This means less brain drain for me when trying to make change at restaurants and such.

As for the seizures, as painful as the memories are, I at least haven’t experienced any since May 2024, so not quite two years. Time and space have largely eased the fears and anticipation I used to have about the prospect of them recurring. In a mutual decision with my seizure doctor in early February, we agreed that it would be okay to stop taking one of the two seizure medications I was on. I had no reason to think the decision would not go well, and neither did my doctor. I would cut the dosage in half for one month and then stop it altogether. My general line of thinking when it comes to medications and supplements is that I don’t want to be on them unless they are necessary.

I took my last dose of that medication this past Sunday night. It’s an extended-release version, and I only take it once a day, so technically my body won’t notice that it’s without that medication until sometime after Monday night.

After nearly two years, I didn’t even make it a full forty-eight hours (counting from Monday night) without having a seizure.
 
And boy, was it a whopper. And boy, did I learn in the span of a few minutes that that medication was 100% necessary.

I had a broken lamp, a ding in my wall, a knot on my head, and a painful shoulder telling me so.

To set the stage for how all these things quite literally collided: After I didn’t take the meds on Monday night, I didn’t feel all that great on Tuesday, but I hadn’t felt all that great since late last year, so I didn’t think much of it. I learned in my routine physical in December that I have a new thyroid issue, and I suspect I am sliding into perimenopause. (I tell ya, my mid-life had seemingly been one crash landing after another.) I have been experiencing terrible insomnia. I have felt lethargic for large portions of the day. I haven’t had a great appetite. I have developed tinnitus (which is maddening, especially for someone who spends a large portion of her life in silence). I chalked it all up to issues I had been collecting with the thyroid and maybe hormones. The notion of it having anything to do with the medication withdrawal did not occur to me in the slightest. Tuesday night, I had the probably the worst night of sleep since being in the neuro critical care unit in the hospital back in April of 2024. Most of Wednesday morning I felt mildly queasy.

At 12:30 p.m. on Wednesday, I was working like normal, and I joined our weekly video team meeting with my two coworkers, Jill and Simon. The three of us make up our conference planning team, so I speak to them pretty much every day, even outside of work. I have known Jill for almost twenty years, and I have known Simon since I started at the organization thirteen years ago. But these two have run the gauntlet with me these last two years, and I with them. We have each been through the tumbler in our own unique ways. They saw me across the screen in the early days when I was recovering from the craniotomy, and when I would be in meetings, slouched in a chair with my eyes closed, just listening, because I visually couldn’t handle looking at my computer screen for very long. They moved meeting times around when I was so tired from medication that I couldn’t function. They shouldered extra tasks when I just could not get things done in a timely manner.

In short, they were—and still are—unbelievably kind, funny, compassionate, patient, accommodating, and understanding. I couldn’t ask for better coworkers.

And on Wednesday, they were forced to run the gauntlet again. They unknowingly helped redeem painful memories of seizures, turning this seizure into one that later filled me with laughter.

While we met, we ran through our agenda, aiming to discuss some details before we were to be joined by a few members of our data team. At one point, I had something I wanted to comment on while Jill was talking, so I simply raised a single pointer finger to signal that I wanted to interject. She paused, I commented, and we carried on.

One vital thing to note here: I have a standing desk. (A beautiful one, I might add. It had been newly finished, courtesy of my friend, Chet, who installed an ultra-smooth piece of walnut plywood for the desk itself and then installed stone tiles for the backdrop. I love it, and I thought the final piece turned out so well. But that’s not really the vital thing to note here. The point is that I was standing during this meeting.)
 
As we carried on with our agenda, I was still standing when suddenly I felt that dreaded sensation in my left leg, the signal that I knew a seizure was coming—something I hadn’t felt in nearly two years but remembered all too well. Crazy enough, I felt no sense of panic; only the need for politeness motivated me to hold up my left pointer finger again to indicate that I had something to say. In those split seconds, the seizure moved up to my arm, and I could tell it was all about to come undone. Jill noticed my finger and paused, “Yes, Courtney?” She thought I just needed to comment on something. My leg then totally locked up, and I started sliding to the right across my ultra-smooth, beautiful walnut desk. I uttered very simply, with no emotion, “Guys, I’m having a seizure,” and then down I went.

My memory is a bit scattered, but the initial slide into oblivion doesn’t exist in my memory bank. I remember cracking my head on the sturdy Dale Tiffany floor lamp post next to my desk, ricocheting off it once and then hitting it again at the base as I fully hit the ground. As I landed face up, I looked up at the stained-glass globe, swinging violently as it bounced off the wall. I reflexively lifted my right arm into the air toward the lamp to shield myself, as I thought the glass was about to shatter and come raining down on me. My left side was convulsing the whole time, and I had no control over it.

As I finally reached the end of the fall to the floor, my brain gained clarity, and I realized what had happened. I could talk to Jill and Simon at this point, sans raised finger, as they were still on the call. Jill thankfully had my mom’s phone number, so she stepped off to call my mom while I continued talking to Simon. Jill got a hold of my mom, and she asked her whether to call 911. My mom said yes, of course. And I yelled no from the floor, still seizing. “Don’t call 911! It’s not necessary.” Poor Jill was caught in the middle of one person telling her to call 911 while the other—who had taken a less-than-graceful fall and was lying on the floor—was telling her not to.

I honestly didn’t know what all was said, so you’ll have to ask them if you know Jill or Simon, but I remember we were joking a lot, the conversation occasionally fractured by the flow of tears and sobs on my end—not from pain, but from the fact that I was back in a place medically that I had hoped I would never return to. I remember being a sweaty mess. I tend to lean toward the cold side, so that day, I had on a long-sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt, and my fleece bathrobe. So, here I was, laying spread-eagle on the floor, my left side no longer spasming, trying to get out of at least one layer of clothing, but couldn’t because the left side of my body wasn’t working. I figured it out somehow, but I was sweating even more. I put my hand to the back of my head where I banged it, already a goose egg forming, because it felt like it was bloody, but nope (thankfully), just sweaty.

I continued talking to Jill and Simon from the floor, not even trying to get up because I knew my body couldn’t hack it. I generally lose all sensation, coordination, and strength when I have a seizure, so getting up with no one else around was out of the question. But given that I was far enough away from my computer, I was trying to project enough that they could still hear me. I wasn’t yelling, but it felt like it to me.

So, to recap: I politely and calmly interrupted my coworkers to tell them I was having a seizure, tipped over, crashed into the lamp, which crashed into the wall, and then eventually landed on the floor, where I wound up sweating, crying, laughing, and insisting Jill not call 911.

My parents eventually arrived, but my dad was unfamiliar with how to use a Mac and couldn’t log me out of the meeting, so while I was still on the floor, I attempted to prop myself up and I snaked my hand up to the edge of the desk to reach the external mouse to close things out—like some sort of child trying to slide their hand into the cookie jar, hoping to go unnoticed. I was mildly yelling at Jill and Simon, saying goodbye before we all exited.

That’s when the full-on meltdown began. My parents had seen most of my seizures. They were the ones who had been up close and personal with all the emotions and chaos that came with them. My dad helped me off the floor and guided me to my recliner in my bedroom across the hallway. I was now a snot-nosed mess, although at least less of a sweaty one.
 
I immediately took a full dose of the meds I had stopped. Lesson learned. Don’t do that again.

The ensuing twenty-four hours were filled with regrouping and piecing together memories of the fall. It felt like I was putting together a crime scene, connecting one shell casing to the shoe tread to the hole in the wall, wondering how one thing had led to the other.

My parents took me to their house for the evening, with plans to come back to my house and have my mom stay with me for the night as a precaution. As I lay on the couch at my parents’, I reached back to rub my left shoulder and thought, “Yowza, that hurts.” It felt so bruised and sore, but I had no memory of hitting my left shoulder. I peeled off my clothing, only to discover a layer or two of skin had been peeled off in the fall—even under three layers of clothes. So, then I realized that was where my memory must have blacked out, the moment when I hit the desk. All I consciously remember hitting was the lamp, not the desk.

After my mom and I stayed back at my house Wednesday night, my mom noticed the next morning that the lamp was broken and there was a ding in the wall—neither detail I had noticed on the day of the fall.

A diagram of the crime scene

So, to recap the accumulated ailments and missing initial facts, by Thursday morning, I now had a highly bruised shoulder, a goose egg on the back of my head, a broken lamp (made of hearty metal and not easily broken, I might add!), and a mild dent in my wall that I may just leave for posterity’s sake.

Simon and Jill faithfully checked in. God bless my poor friends; I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like to watch your coworker vanish from sight through a computer screen and then hear all this banging around—not knowing if she was alive, dead, or somewhere in between. Simon told me later that the sound of it all made his stomach churn. But he did place a request that maybe I could try to take my computer with me the next time I fell, just so they could be with me on the floor. I told him I’d practice. He also wouldn’t be opposed if we all wore helmets to future team meetings. Ah, yes, Simon’s famous snark and wit, which I love and desperately needed.

But you know what the craziest thing about all of this was? Thursday night I was reflecting on the physical sequence of the fall itself, the detective in me still piecing things together. I fell to my right, so in theory, my right side should have been damaged far more than my left. So, how was it that my left shoulder and the left backside of my head bore the brunt? The injuries didn’t match the direction of the fall.

There’s no way I could have made a split-second decision to turn myself around in that moment. The motto of a seizure is the motto of Silicon Valley: Move fast and break things. I firmly believe it was only through an act of God that in the nanoseconds it took for me to black out, I was whipped around so fast that I was facing away from my desk—thus explaining how my left shoulder hit the corner of my desk and how the left side of my head hit the lamp. My body had to have moved so fast that I could have qualified for Olympic figure skating. If I had still been facing the desk, my jaw and skull would have made first contact with it. And while I’ll never know, I can only imagine that the implications of that scenario would have been infinitely more damaging.
 
A friend of mine shared once that she and another friend adopted a motto when they travel together: It’s either going to be good, or it’s going to be a good story.
 
It’s not good that I had a seizure after nearly two years, but it sure does make for a good story. I think.

All kidding aside, I really am okay. I was slated to have my next routine MRI at the end of this month anyway, but as a precaution, I requested to have it moved up if possible. My oncologist’s office was able to move the appointment up and we’ll have imaging to see if anything did go awry internally in the fall.

Retiring the Word of God

Next to Psalm 73 in my Bible, a beloved psalm of mine, is a simple note indicating the years 2003–2007, followed by assorted underlined verses and cross-reference notes in the margins of the psalm. A quote from famed theologian C.S. Lewis is parked in ink down by the latter verses. 

There’s a printed copy of a letter that the late author and pastor Eugene Peterson wrote, which usually migrates from one section to another, serving as a bookmark for wherever I’m reading at the moment. The first chapter of Genesis is scribbled with notes and is complete with a flourish of creases on the pages. The once-silver-gilded edges are now faded and nearly gone from use and wear.

Poor Genesis 1 has seen better days.

A select few verses are highlighted with actual highlighters, but I quickly grew an aversion to them because they bled through the page, so that habit didn’t last too long. My primary tools for underlining became ballpoint pens and the occasional pencil when I didn’t want to fully commit to the thought or the note. 

Ezekiel 37 is a mess of notes. Next to Isaiah 43:18–19 are the names of three people, myself included, along with corresponding dates of when I prayed those specific verses for them and myself. A  pink Post-it takes up a corner of the page on Exodus 33. 

The entire front section starting from the publisher notes and the table of contents up to Genesis 50 is threatening to abdicate from the whole book, quite literally barely hanging on, as are the maps in the back. I’ve attempted to glue both sections back in multiple times, but they just keep threatening secession.

My Bible is just barely over twenty-one years old, a gift from my parents for Christmas 2004, during my sophomore year of college. As much as I am loath to retire this copy, I know it’s time to wave the white flag. It’s quite literally falling apart, with its binding stressed beyond its limits thousands of times over.

I purchased a beautiful new hardback Bible that has a different kind of binding (hello, smith-sewyn binding!) so that I don’t run into the same issue of nearly losing Genesis. The new one also has a wide-ruled margin, eagerly awaiting new notes, names, and dates. But I feel as though I am going to have to somehow pry my old copy out of my own hands—I don’t want to let it go.

We’ve been through so much together, me and my old Bible. College. Grad school. Friendships. Jobs. Travel. Heartache. Loss. Cancer. This copy of my Bible feels like an extension of myself. If someone had the time, I suppose they could probably trace the major events and relationships of my life through the notes scattered throughout it.

And while I am retiring this particular copy, I am reminded afresh that for those of us who are Christ-followers, we can never retire from the Word of God itself. This means we can never reach a point where we set it aside and simply say we’ve arrived at a certain destination in life, and therefore, the Bible has reached the pinnacle of use in our lives and we can let it go. We must continue to invest and invest, day after day, year after year, because there’s never a time when we are to stop investing in it and then start drawing upon the accumulation of existing wealth. We are to forever be investing in and drawing from the Word of God simultaneously.

Years ago, I saw this expressed through a sage woman named Esther, who lived in a village outside Nairobi, Kenya. She said something that is seared into my brain. For context, I’ve done two short-term stints in Kenya, both times in the same village and both times with the Rafiki Foundation. Back in 2010 and 2012 when I went, they had about 100 orphans under their care in that particular village. Boys and girls were separated into cottages, about ten children per cottage. Every evening, each cottage would hold devotions, which were a time of singing hymns, reading Scripture, and praying. It was a precious time of day, and I loved visiting a different cottage each night. The mamas, the ones tasked with raising the children, would lead this time of devotions.

I went to Joppa cottage one particular night, led by Mama Esther, a stout, stoic Kenyan woman. She ran a tight ship with her ten boys, who were a total handful. Everyone was expected to be in his pajamas and properly in his seat by 7:00 pm. Little barefoot black and brown toes hung over the edges of the seats; for some, their little legs weren’t even able to touch the ground. It was a special night that night—some of the boys were to receive their very own copy of the Bible, which they didn’t get until they reached a certain age.

Before she started handing out Bibles to the boys, she held up one Bible very slowly. I could tell she was gearing up to deliver some serious words. She looked very carefully and intently at each of the boys and said deliberately, in her thick Kenyan accent, "Don't ever go to sleep without knowing where this is," holding up the Bible. She paused, as if gathering steam, her voice taking on a low, purposeful tone, deep with conviction. I knew she wasn’t messing around with whatever her next words would be. "If you wake up in the middle of the night and don't know where it is, you get out of bed and go find it. And you do not rest until you have found it again."

Each sentence was punctuated by the intensity of her voice. Those boys knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she took the Word of God seriously, and they were to do the same.

Mama Esther in all her floral glory

And yet, there I was, convicted beyond measure. For all intents and purposes, I am an affluent, well-educated, white woman from America who has multiple copies of the Bible in multiple translations and formats, both digital and print. Not only that, I have it in my own native language. I have a gross abundance of access to the Word of God. I bought a new copy of the Bible that contains all the books, simply because my old one was falling apart. With a few clicks of a button, voilà! There it is on my doorstep. There are some people in this world who would die for a single page of the Bible, let alone a complete copy. And yet how often do I esteem it so lightly, finding far more entertaining things to do and taking it for granted?

Mama Esther’s words weren’t for those boys; they were for me.

Perhaps they are for you, too. Perhaps you, like me, have numerous copies of the Bible. Or maybe you have a single copy of the Bible. Maybe you have a pristine copy gathering dust on the shelf. Maybe you have one that is also falling apart like mine. Maybe you read it today. Maybe you haven’t read it in years.

Mama Esther’s words—and mine—are not words of guilt or condemnation, words meant to bury us under accusation. But may they be words of exhortation and conviction, words that lift us beyond our own complacency and apathy, words meant to incite a kind of urgency within us.

Whatever the version, whatever the condition, whatever the age, whatever the length of time since you last picked it up. I pray you don’t ever ‘retire’ from the Word of God or turn it out to pasture, releasing it from having a meaningful presence in your life. Keep making investments. Keep picking it up. Keep choosing it. It will pay dividends in return and it comes with a high amount of compounding interest. God promises that it will be so. You can take that to the bank.

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).