Where I’ve Been (and Where I’m Going)

If you’re wondering where I’ve been… I exited stage right over a year ago and have been pretty quiet ever since.

Originally, I stepped away to have surgery on my arm and elbow. The healing was excruciating and took far longer than anyone expected. Afterwards, I found myself preparing for my oldest to leave the nest and head off to college… and somewhere in the middle of all of that, I had one of those “If I’m almost no longer a mom on a 24/7 basis… Who am I? Who does God say I am?” moments. Or panic. 😅

Essentially, I think I had a midlife crisis… but really, it was more of a midlife pause and ponder. Not necessarily a crisis.

While I pondered, I packed up my sweet boy—bought a million dorm room essentials—and started sorting through his childhood things. And then, right in the middle of it all, our precious dog Josie (aka JuJuBEE) was suddenly in unbearable pain. We had to put her down. Her pain was awful. 💔 It broke our hearts—truly shattered us into a thousand pieces. She was THE BEST.

We pulled ourselves together, kept packing, and moved him to school. Phil practically had to drag me away. I sobbed—ugly sobbed—all the way to the car. Ugh.

Then we came home… and immediately started packing up our entire house. We moved everything in one week. Yes, I nearly derailed. I lost my mind. I was exhausted beyond words… and yet, by the grace of God, I kept moving forward.

And then—my youngest tore his ACL + MCL. We were waiting for surgery when Hurricane Helene hit… so we entered survival mode.

It has been… a year. And when the dust finally settled, I had to sit with that midlife pause a little longer.

So… what now?

I’ve been deep in scripture—studying, writing, pondering, and seeking direction. “Should I stay or should I go?” 🎶 — my personal theme song.

But here’s the thing:
I have to paint.
It’s part of my bones, my breath. It’s how I make sense of the world. It’s how I meditate on scripture. It’s how I wall myself off and find quiet time with God. It was knit into the fabric of my being.

I have to be creative—whether that’s painting, writing, or gardening.

So who am I?

I am a child of God.
A daughter of the King.
A wife. A mom. A daughter.
A writer. A gardener. A reader and keeper of books.
An obsessive scripture studier…
An artist. And an introvert.

My work seeks to capture the essence of God in the midst of life—in the LIGHT, the WATER, the FOREST, the SEA, the SKY, and the GARDEN.

With every painting, what I’m quietly asking is:

Are you slowing down enough to notice the beautiful ways God is touching your life… or are you in such a hurry you’re missing it all?

My Summer Reflections

Over the past spring, God began to whisper to me and in many different ways to Pay Attention & Receive. Those words seemed to be in every passage of scripture I read, in every book I listened to as I painted, in podcasts, or the radio…everywhere I looked those two words repeated.

And then I stumbled across a quote in The Waymaker by Ann Voskamp:

“In the stillness, there can be attentiveness beyond our own questioning of God, to the questions God is asking us……   Attentiveness leads to receptiveness. And the more attentive we are to what is happening in our lives, the more receptive we are to God’s way, and my attentiveness to God’s questions, God’s asking, might ground me, reroute me, return me…..Attend to God’s questions to tend your own soul. Attending to where you are tends to change the way you are.” ( pg 150 - 152)    

I have found as I creep closer to 50 and my children begin to approach the moment where they fly from this nest we have created, I am in a state of wondering, wondering what it has all been about. And yet, this summer God very gently whispered to me that these two sweet, thoughtful humans we have raised, have been and still are my most important work.