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).

2025: This Is My Body Broken For You

I texted a friend recently, explaining that I had contracted shingles, probably because my body is so stressed these days. Once we sorted out her initial inquiries about the situation, she quipped, "You're no longer a forty-one-year-old woman. You are officially sixty-five."

I then asked her if it raised my age even more when I told her that I had recently purchased a bathrobe to wear most of the time because I get so cold—which, being cold isn't technically anything new; it's just the bathrobe.

She responded and jokingly said it reminded her of Cousin Eddie in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.

Oh dear. 

(But don't worry, folks, I bear no other resemblance to Cousin Eddie other than wearing a bathrobe, and that includes the fact I'm not standing out on the curb, drinking a beer, smoking a cigar, and emptying the sewage tank of my camper because "the s--- was full." This comparison to Uncle Eddie is highly limited.)

It sure feels like I'm sixty-five these days, though, as my body just can’t seem to figure out how to mind its manners. And when it does, it can't seem to do it for consecutive days. It feels like here in the latter half of 2025, I've had more doctor's appointments post-treatment than I did during the treatment itself. I looked back through my calendar and discovered that I've had at least one doctor's appointment, if not multiple, every week since August 17, minus the week of the national conference for my job and the week of Thanksgiving.

To keep things in perspective for myself, I wrote a quote on my kitchen dry erase board from author and Bible teacher Beth Moore: "It's not that we should be surprised that we get sick, but rather that we spend more than ten consecutive minutes well."

I still get surprised when I get sick, and I get surprised when I'm not well for more than ten consecutive minutes. Yet I shouldn't be, not so long as I walk this planet. The apostle Paul plainly reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:4, "For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened..." (ESV). While we are in this tent—these bodies—we groan, being burdened by them.

I was so hopeful for treatment to end and to put regular appointments behind me, but alas, that has not happened. Between the ingrown toenail I had removed in September, which didn’t heal properly and caused a cascading effect of muscle issues because I started walking differently to avoid the pain, and an episode of shingles that, thankfully, was very mild, my body just cannot seem to get itself sorted out. Oh, and then I accidentally injured my other big toe toenail, for which I’m now on alert for possibly losing that nail as well. All of this has culminated in me being hyperaware of how hyper-vigilant I am about the slightest symptoms.

"My toe seems redder than normal. Does that mean I have an infection in my bone now?!"

"I slept abnormally long last night and didn’t have much of an appetite when I woke up; something must be wrong!"

"What does that red mosquito-like bump mean? Did some sort of bug bite me in the night?!"

"Why do I feel so crummy? Do I have food poisoning?!"

I could go on and on with examples. All of them irrational, and all of them mentally exhausting. No wonder shingles made a visit. I am stressed about being stressed. I groan and am burdened by this body.

But I suppose a brain tumor that went undetected for years can do that to you, leaving you wondering if the next odd symptom isn’t just an imaginary monster under your bed, but rather one that really is alive and growing. It's been very hard to bring all those thoughts under control because I walk around wondering if there is some other major malady that I'm missing—the next monster coming for me.

Every time I ponder these bodily issues, this physical brokenness, I voice my exasperations to God. I tell him how sick I am of thinking about my body, and then my mind wanders to a picture of Jesus at the Last Supper with his disciples. He offers communion, holding a loaf of bread in his soon-to-be nail-scarred hands, uttering the words, "And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me" (1 Corinthians 11:24, KJV).

This is my body, which is broken for you.

Jesus willingly gave up his heavenly glory and perfection to inhabit this planet in a physical body that was weak, smelly, hungry, thirsty, and bloody. His was a physical body that experienced pain the same way ours does. His body, though, would be nailed to a cross, where his shoulders were likely wrenched out of their sockets, his back shredded to resemble hamburger meat, his head mashed with a crown of thorns on it, and hands and feet hammered repeatedly with what was probably the equivalent of railroad spikes. For Jesus to endure what he did on the cross was no small thing. It was sheer agony. And it resulted in his physical death, though blessedly temporary.

As I ponder my own body and its many moments of illness, I have to ask myself: Am I willing to echo the words Jesus said at the Last Supper in return, offering my brokenness back to God the Father? Am I willing to give thanks for all that I have, broken body and all, and say back to him, This is my body broken for you? Am I willing to give my body back to him as he gave his for me?

I will readily admit that that it’s annoying and frustrating that my body doesn’t function as I wish it would, and I will readily admit that I cannot answer those questions with any form of a resounding yes.

I wish I could do pistol squats again at the gym; right now, it's a little more of a squirt gun squat.

I wish I could swing sixty-pound kettlebells like I used to, even if I know such a movement serves no functional purpose in daily living.

I wish I could lift the laundry detergent up on the shelf with my left arm without wincing in pain. Perhaps my haphazard decision to buy Cheer detergent last time is a subtle nudge from the Holy Spirit.

I wish my left toenail would heal so I didn’t have to prop myself against the wall to put a dumb cast cover on it before I shower to keep moisture and dirty water off it.

I wish I could figure out how to get off the floor without contorting myself into some sort of performer at Cirque du Soleil to avoid banging my toe, making it worse.

I wish I could put my left sock (just my left!) on without needing to practically fold myself in half and hope the sock catches on at least one toe.

I wish I didn’t have to remember to take meds and supplements at 7:00 am, 8:00 am, 11:00 am, 2:00 pm, 8:00 pm, and 9:00 pm. (The one at 7:00 am, 2:00 pm, and 9:00 pm is thankfully short-lived, as it’s for shingles. The one at 11:00 am can’t be within two hours either way of other supplements, and only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Oh, and the one at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm can swing an hour either way. I need reminders for the reminders.)

I wish, I wish, I wish.

We are all wishing there were something different about our bodies. Perhaps more beautiful, less broken. Perhaps more mindful, less medicated. Perhaps more disciplined, less distracted. Perhaps more perfect, less painful.

We could all probably agree that we would gladly give up the groaning we have over our physical bodies or the bodies of our loved ones.

But would any of us willingly step to the front of the line of dysfunctional bodies and tell God he can do whatever he pleases with our bodies in accordance with his will? Would we volunteer and say, "Take mine. If you wound it, then you wound it. If you maim it, you maim it. If you break it, you break it. Whatever you desire for my body, Lord, do it." Would we be like Job, the ancient sufferer who lost all, including his own health, yet still proclaims, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15, KJV)?

Though God slays our bodies—perhaps even unto death itself—will we trust in him?

I haven't been able to answer that question for myself as of yet, at least not in a way that is total surrender to God, as I truly would love to be consistently well and free of ailments and odd symptoms, and of course, cancer-free. Yet this is where we live while on Planet Earth, stuck between the tension of bodies that are imperfect, sick, and maimed, and bodies that will one day be made whole for all eternity. Paul went on to say in 2 Corinthians 5:4, "For while we are still in this tent, we groan, being burdened—not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life."

The day will come when our broken bodies will be made whole, and not only will they be well for more than ten consecutive minutes, they will be gloriously well for all eternity. The mortal will be swallowed up in life everlasting and attempting to be a Cirque du Soleil performer just to get socks on and stand upright will be a thing of the past. 

Leaving and Staying

Before I bought my grandmother's house in 2022, I had moved four times in five years. When I moved into the house, I had no plans of buying it, but over time one of the chief reasons I decided to buy was because I was sick of putting my life in boxes and asking friends and family to help me haul things around the city. I had moved in September 2017, June 2019, December 2020, and then finally into my grandmother's house in December 2021. I joked with my parents shortly after I formally purchased the house in June 2022 that they could just bury me in the backyard someday because I was never moving again.

This is a radical change from how I spent virtually all of my college and young adult years. It was then that I did the bulk of my traveling and leaving. If my memory serves me correctly, before I left for college, I had been on a plane precisely two times—to and from Alaska with my parents and grandmother in the summer of 2002. But during and after college, I lived to be on the go. I dreaded the thought of being in one place for too long. I was terrified of getting ‘stuck.’ So, I just stayed in perpetual motion, the restlessness a raging force in my life: Missouri, Russia, San Diego, North Carolina, Kenya (twice!), Guatemala. And, of course, I picked up friends from these places along the way, who were also coming from other parts of the country, so then I’d go back to visit them, or we’d meet up somewhere. Missouri was the longest stint, living out there six out of seven years while I finished both undergrad and grad school. It was an interesting sensation when I watched the movie Up In the Air—which was filmed primarily in the St. Louis airport and was the airport I flew in and out of while I lived in Missouri—and essentially knew which terminal almost all the airport scenes were filmed.

Then it seemed that when I hit my thirties, I discovered a figurative set of brakes, or at least how to pump them. Life slowed down, and the restless tug grew quieter and quieter. The last time I went overseas was when I was twenty-nine. The desire to leave the country seemingly vanished, and I set my sights on more domestic longings. I was thirty-one when I went to Jackson Hole for the first time in 2015. And then I went again, and again, and again. Once I discovered Jackson, I had little interest in going elsewhere. There were still a few places I would go on vacation to with family, but by and large, Jackson ruled the roost for me.

Now, in my forties, I prefer to just leave my life car in park altogether, especially after these last two years. I feel Nate Bargatze's clip on how he moved through the first half of his life deep in my bones because it's so on point. It reflects all too well my own progression from my twenties to my thirties and now my forties. For those in their fifties and beyond, feel free to to extend Nate's observations and weigh in on what the possibilities could be for my future decades.

As I've been looking back on each of these decades recently and all the moving I did, I am often reminded of how the Israelites moved about after they came out of slavery in Egypt. I recently started attending a new church over the last several months, and it has already become dear to me in a very short amount of time. The pastor decided over three years ago to preach through the entirety of the Bible, verse by verse, beginning with Genesis 1. He just reached the fourth book of the Bible, Numbers, when I arrived in October.

The book of Numbers follows the Hebrew people in the days and months immediately following their freedom from Egypt and slavery. They have crossed the Red Sea and are now in the desert. God is giving them the purity laws, explaining to them the ways in which they are to conduct themselves as his chosen people. He’s also explaining to them how to lay out their camp according to the tribes, with the tabernacle at the center of all they do. He chooses a cloud to indicate his presence, which is perpetually present, serving as an indicator of God's continual presence with his people. If the cloud moved, the people of God were to move. It didn’t matter how long or short they had been in camp; they moved when God moved.

Think about this: over one million people were living in tents, and all their worldly possessions with them, including their livestock. Every time they moved, they had to pack their clothes, gather their herds, families, and all that they had plundered from the Egyptians (with God's permission!), pull up tent stakes, pack up the tents, and move. And then, when they arrived at wherever it was God intended they should go, they did everything in reverse order. Sometimes they moved multiple times within a week; sometimes, maybe once a year. But they did this countless times—for forty years. Packing, leaving, unpacking, staying. Packing, leaving, unpacking, staying. Wash, rinse, repeat, over and over and over again. Numbers 9:18, 22-23 explains:

At the command of the Lord the people of Israel set out, and at the command of the Lord they camped. As long as the cloud rested over the tabernacle, they remained in camp. Whether it was two days, or a month, or a longer time that the cloud continued over the tabernacle, abiding there, the people of Israel remained in camp and did not set out; but when it lifted, they set out. At the command of the Lord they camped, and at the command of the Lord they set out. They kept the charge of the Lord at the command of the Lord by Moses.

I can’t fathom that kind of nomadic lifestyle. What if they didn’t want to move? What if they liked that particular piece of ground? What if someone in their family physically didn’t feel well and traveling was difficult?

It didn’t matter if they didn’t want to, didn’t feel well, or were tired. What mattered above all else was the presence of God. They moved when God moved. And if he wasn’t moving, then they weren’t moving either. I wonder what I would have done if I were among the Israelites. Would I have become bitter over what felt like such a grueling exercise in futility and inefficiency? Or would have there have been any part of me that would have appreciated the process or been grateful, beholding the wonder that was the presence of God himself in a cloud? Would I have been asking God why he couldn't just get us to our destination in a single trip? 

There's a lot of things God was teaching the Israelites through the use of the cloud, but one of which was to see that the staying and leaving both mattered, for however long. God was teaching them to be tuned to his presence above all else—above their own preferences, above their own wellbeing, and above their own longings. Because whether staying or going, it meant proximity to the presence of God and it was proof that they were a people marked, sheltered, and protected by God himself. Moses, the leader of this mass of nomadic people, said in Exodus 33:15-16 explained why the presence of God mattered so much, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

Moses was desperately pleading with God to not send them somewhere that God himself would not go with them, for who were the Israelites if Immanuel, which literally translates not just to the "God Who is With Us," but to "the With-Us God", did, in fact, not go with them? What was going to set them apart from everyone else on the face of the earth? It would be meaningless for them to go anywhere that God was not, and Moses inherently knew this. The Promised Land was a meaningless promise if God did not go with them.

I hope God physically doesn't move me again anytime soon, but I want to be where the With-Us God is, attentive to his Holy Spirit and his workings. And I'm not just talking about whether I continue to live in this house or not. It can also mean other spaces and categories. I don't want to be in a job where he isn't. I don't want to be in a friendship where he isn't. I don't want to be in a conversation where he isn't. Yes, I understand that we as believers who live under the power of the New Covenant do not live like the Old Covenant Israelites where God did not dwell in them. I have the power of the Living God in and with me at all times. So, I don't actually need to ask God to be with me like Moses did, but I do still have to be aware of his Holy Spirit. I often pray Galatians 5:25, that I would keep in step with the Spirit. If he moves, I want to move with him. If he's telling me to pull up stakes, then I'm pulling up stakes. If he's telling me to write something specific, then I'm writing something specific. If he's telling me to text a particular person with a particular encouragement, I'm texting. From the big to the small, I want to be where he is. For how else will anyone know that I belong to him? I want to go where the cloud of his presence goes, leaving and staying when he leaves and when he stays.

Who knows what the remainder of my forties look like, but I hope that no matter what decade I'm in that I'm moving wherever the presence of God is, even if I do have to pack up boxes. Again.

Health update

Treatment already feels like it was some sort of dark, distant nightmare, even thought it's only been four months since I took my last chemo pill. I don't know what it is exactly about the latter half of 2025, but it seems like somebody punched the light speed on humanity's collective Millennium Falcon, sending us all hurtling into space with entire galaxies whizzing by like long streams of thin white lines. And it seems as though everyone else has been feeling the same way, not just me.

I had my first post-treatment MRI last week and then met with the neuro-onc immediately after. The tumor is stable and shows no signs of growth, which is the hope for every MRI moving forward. Generally speaking, as soon as treatment was over, I didn't have any lingering symptoms other than some blood count issues. I had been working with a functional medicine nurse and nutritionist prior to treatment ending with the express intent of getting things in place so that my body would rebound well from the hits it took during treatment. And that seems to have happened. All things considered, it's a miracle that I am doing as well as I am neurologically and functionally. 

My next MRI should have been scheduled for February at the standard three month mark, but the doctor felt I was doing so well that we could go ahead and extend the interval out to April, which is good news. I still have a smattering of appointments between now and then, most of which are just routine care and check ins with other specialists. All in all, I am doing well, by the goodness and grace of God!

A King and A People of Oxymorons

A year ago tomorrow, I celebrated my fortieth birthday by mourning. I disappeared to a cabin by a lake with a college friend—the kind of friend who will sit with you in the ash heap and not say a word, much like Job's friends did after he suffered one devastating loss after another after another: "Then they sat on the ground with him... No one said a word to him because they saw how great his suffering was" (Job 2:13). There’s a photo of me from that weekend, still nearly bald, my face splotchy from crying, sporting a socially expected smile, holding up a funfetti cupcake on a plate, a single candle staked in the center, the flame alight. I looked and felt like a mess. I don’t know what I expected my fortieth birthday to look like, but it sure wasn’t that.

Oh hey there, cancer. Thanks for ruining the party.
But sadly, I cannot blame you for my poor fashion choices.

I was a sick healthy person. I was in the best shape of my life when I was diagnosed. Pound for pound, I was probably one of the strongest people in the gym. I had no underlying health conditions—or so I and everyone else thought. But my brain tumor had been there all along, as multiple doctors stated it had likely been growing for years, waiting, undetected. I literally had an underlying health condition, just centimeters beneath my skull. I was a mourning rejoicer on my fortieth birthday because I was rejoicing in the fact that I even lived to see the day after some hellacious months leading up to it, but mourning all that those months had cost me mentally, emotionally, and physically.

About a month after my diagnosis, I watched Katherine Wolf speak at IF: Gathering 2024. Katherine's life was upended at twenty-six when she suffered a cataclysmic stroke that left her permanently disabled. At that point in my own journey, I hadn't yet had the craniotomy, which wouldn’t come until another month after IF. As I listened to Katherine speak, I was struck by her use of the phrase “wounded healers." 

I've rolled that phrase around in my heart for over a year now. Being wounded—aching with the hurts of this world—is not what sets Christians apart. All of humanity is bloodied, beaten, and bruised. We are all the walking wounded. However, as Christ-followers we do have a unique calling to be healers, even when we ourselves are wounded, for the Savior we serve is a wounded healer himself. Isaiah 53:4-6 paints this oxymoron of an identity:

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering; yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Christ is not just the King of the Jews (Matthew 27:37), but the King of Oxymorons, for he is both the chief wounded healer and the ultimate living sacrifice. And as image bearers of that same Christ, those identities must be our identities. We, too, are to be wounded healers and living sacrifices, as Romans 12:1 commands us, "Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship."

We, too, are to be people of the oxymoron, a people called to live with incongruent identities. 

We are sinful saints, for we are both sinful and yet saved, destined to join other saints in heaven.

"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God..." (Romans 3:23), but "For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).

We are rich beggars, for we are both rich in Christ, heirs to his kingdom, and yet poor in spirit.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3).

We are hungry feasters, for we are both spiritually hungry and yet we feast at the table of Christ. 

"Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food" (Isaiah 55:1-2).

We are afflicted comforters, for we are both afflicted in body and spirit and yet called to comfort others.  

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God." (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

The list could easily go on and on for we live in this upside down kingdom of God which abounds in oxymorons. I was pondering this reality anew at 5:14 a.m. this morning when I found myself lying in a hospital bed at the local urgent care as the result of pain in my toe that woke me from a dead sleep. (I am praying the remaining birthdays in my forties are not spent having some sort of complicated medical issue. I am unimpressed with the decade thus far.) I had the nail removed two weeks ago due to an ingrown toenail that under normal circumstances would have been removed back in March when it first started going squirrelly, but due to my blood counts and my platelets not clotting properly during treatment, we had to just keep babying the thing until after treatment was over and I could get it removed. Turns out the platelets have not rebounded like they should have and I am still having troubles clotting.

The urgent care physician mentioned in passing as she was standing nonchalantly at the foot of my bed, pressing a bandage to my toe trying to get it to stop bleeding, that she too had had cancer. And that's when it struck me afresh. Here was a walking embodiment of a wounded healer. The once sick now tending to the current sick. The once afflicted comforting the now afflicted.

This is to be our aim for those of us who claim the name of Christ and seek to follow him. Living in that space of incongruent identities is no small thing for it will demand much of us—and potentially take much from us. It is a place of deep discomfort and tension. Because it is easy to simply become only one part of the oxymoron. 

We can be afflicted but choose not to leverage that pain to comfort others in their own afflicting. 

We can be living but choose not to sacrifice for the good of others or to the glory of God. 

We can feast to the exclusion of those around us who are hungry, whether physically or spiritually.

Similarly, we can be rich to the exclusion of those around us who lack in whatever form. 

We can be sinful but never choose to move toward the salvation of Jesus Christ, whereby we will be perpetually begging, hungry, afflicted, and dead in an eternity apart from God.

Because in hell perhaps the chief oxymoron is that it is home of the undying dead, an oxymoron that can never be healed or undone once you arrive.

I pray that I am the kind of person who sits well in the tension of the contradictions, someone who seeks to follow the King of Oxymorons, even as I am the same changing person, being conformed to his image even as I walk in the brokenness of my sin.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Page

I travel many a road when it comes to my reading moods. The year started with a leisurely stroll into theology (Reforesting Faith: What Trees Teach Us About the Nature of God and His Love for Us by Matthew Sleeth). From there, I meandered over to the memoirs (Surprised by Oxford by Carolyn Weber). I then hopped over historical fiction (Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan). I made a pit stop over to romantic suspense (One Wrong Move by Dani Pettrey), only to discover I had actually already read that one. Only a few pages in, I thought to myself, "Waaaait a minute. This feels vaguely familiar to me." Right, well, when you've already read it, yes, it should feel familiar. Although, I do have a brain tumor, so I pulled the cancer card with myself on that one and let myself off the hook. I still re-read the book as a refresher, knowing the next book in the series was about to be released.

Even now at the young age of forty, maybe I need to pull a Dan Pelzer move and start a log of every book I read. However, thanks to the wonders of technology, my library account does now maintain a 'reading history' for me. I wouldn't have recalled even the short list above if I hadn't referred to that.

Amid the highways and byways of the bookshelves, I managed to find myself reading an autobiography this summer, a task that felt equivalent to a long-haul trucking assignment, crossing state lines, aiming to get from one end to the other in a timely manner. I started it in July, thinking I'd have it done by the time I finished treatment, which was earlier this month. The entire collection is roughly nineteen volumes. I'm working on volume fifteen, so my goal of finishing by the end of treatment obviously did not happen. 

Autobiographies can be hefty reads just because they span an entire life, unlike memoirs that capture a limited point in time and are more digestible. Autobiographies can also be boring at times, tedious even, which makes it hard to push through them (see also Open by Andre Agassi. I attempted to read that earlier this year and abandoned the cause because it was, in fact, a slog, and I could not maintain the energy or desire to finish. What the author cares about may not always be what the reader cares about, and I did not care about tennis.)

It can also be disorienting at times to read everything in first-person, when you are up close and personal with the author's thoughts, behaviors, and perspectives. Maybe you cringe a little. Maybe you laugh a little. Maybe you cry a little. Maybe you disagree a little. You run the gamut of emotions with the author. You get a glimpse into their past, where you find places that maybe are less than glamorous, places that maybe the wider world was unaware of until the person disclosed it on their own terms, in their own words. And you see how that past shaped their present, bringing them to whatever moment in their life they find themselves at the point of publication.

Wondering what the title is and who the author is that I've been trying to make my way through for nearly three months now?

Untitled by Courtney.

I've been reading my own story.

In my own words. 

Page after page.

Volume after volume.

Year after year.

I've kept a journal since January 2, 1997. I was twelve at the time and in the sixth grade. I have nineteen full journals, twenty-one if you count the two bonus ones that I mailed back and forth with friends (those are tagged as volumes 2.1 and 4.1). All of them are stored between three waterproof and fireproof safes and are my most-prized possessions. I would be so grieved if something happened to them, and someone else would be grieved if they broke into my house, thinking they hit the jackpot with three safes, only to find them filled with paper and ink rather than jewels and money.

Ah, the resolutions of my twelve-year-old self.
Clearly my priorities were the welfare of my pets 
(Bud, Maggie, and the fish), and improving my hygiene.

There is at least one entry, typically far more, from every single year since 1997. Almost twenty-nine years of documenting my life. The longest period of time a single journal covers is six years and three months. The shortest one spans a mere four months. I'll never know for certain how many words total I've written but I wouldn't be surprised if it was in the vicinity of half a million words or more.

This isn't the first time I've re-read my own words. I've done it multiple times in the past, and the last go-round was in late 2021. But even since then, I've filled three more journals and working on my fourth. So, every time I do a read through, it is taking me longer and longer to do so. I decided the next time I do it, I'm simply going to read the most recent five years.

What was so astounding to me in this particular re-reading saga, however, was a theme I hadn't really picked up on before. Or if I did, I have no memory of it. (But this is a prime example of why I re-read them - God shows me something new every single time I re-read my journals, some new way he was faithful to me that maybe I had forgotten about and of which I needed to be reminded.) I would get through certain years, especially my high school and college years, and I would be horrified and convicted about how I spoke to myself through those pages. The words I documented reflected my own thoughts, which were primarily thoughts about all the things I "should" have done differently. 

I should have been more loving . . . 

I should have known how to do that . . . 

I should have said this instead of that . . . 

I should love God better . . . 

I should lead better . . . 

I should work harder . . . 

I should try harder . . . 

I should, I should, I should.

Mounds upon mounds of self-condemnation and self-loathing, seemingly chased by a constant sense of failure. It was never explicit, like saying, "I hate myself," but the meaning was there nonetheless, just masquerading as a girl and a woman trying to hold it all together, all the time. It both angered and grieved me all at once. My boss joked with me once, "Court, you've fired yourself a dozen times over from this job. Quit being so hard on yourself."

Even I got sick of reading my own thoughts after while. It all just felt gross, like, "Dang, girl, grant yourself some grace and space to not be perfect." The more I read, the harder it got to continue through the years.

But there came a point when I felt this thought, this conviction from the Holy Spirit, arrive deep in my gut, "This is how you talk to yourself every day." It was as if I was seeing my own self mirrored back to me in a way that I had perhaps always known about, but was reminded of in a startling and stark way.

Mirror, mirror, on the page.

We all face this dilemma, the lies we believe about ourselves. Maybe your lies sound different than mine, and maybe yours aren't documented between the college-lined pages of journals, but they are there in your heart and mind, nonetheless. You are a sinner just like me, and as such, we are all easy prey for the devil's schemes. Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44), after all, and the implications of living in a broken, sinful world, is that we are readily deceived by his accusations. 

So, when we look in this mirror, the question becomes not who is the fairest of us all, but will truth or lies win when the Accuser comes for us?

Mirror, mirror, on the page, will truth or lies win this war we wage?

John the Baptist, the prophet sent prior to Jesus to point people to Jesus, also points us to the way in which we answer this question for ourselves. The Jews and the Jewish leaders of the day kept asking him who he was. Was he Elijah? Was he the Prophet? Was he the Messiah? John denied all of those identities.

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord’” (John 1:22-23).

Did you notice what transpired there? They asked, "What do you say about your own identity?" They handed him their mirror and said, "Tell us who you are when you look into this mirror."  

John, instead, did the exact opposite. He picked up a different mirror and answered with the mirror of the Word of God, from the pages of Scripture, "John replied in the words of Isaiah . . ." It was the words of the Old Testament that told John who he was, what his identity was, what the truth was. The mirror the people handed him was worthless because it would have been built on lies and their own wishes of who they wanted John to be. The Word of God was the only place John knew the truth would rest.

It is the only place we can rest when we seek to determine who we are. It won't come from those around us. It won't come from our spouses, our kids, our friends, our employers, or our social media feed. It won't even come from within ourselves. We are far too easily deceived. When we find ourselves picking up the wrong mirror, one filled with lies, let us pick up the mirror that tells us the truth - always - the Word of God.

Mirror, mirror, on God's page, only your truth can win this war we wage.

May we all start looking in the right mirror, one filled with truth and not lies.