Hope Through Infertility and Miscarriage

When I was eight years old, my parents found me crying face down on my bed, beside myself. When they asked why I was in such a state, I told them I was worried that God would give me a child with mental challenges, and that I would not be a fit mother for them. What the heck, why was I such a weirdo of a kid? Well, God made me a uniquely sensitive and passionate human, and I guess it started to flow out of me from a very young age. I have always known that being a wife and a mother is what I was built for, my truest calling in life. I met my husband Carter when we were both counselors at a church camp. One of the very first things that attracted me to him was how good he was with his campers. I saw a god honoring man pouring out love to children and I was done for.  

Carter was 23 and I was 21 when we got married- I still had a year left in college. We waited one year before we decided to start trying for a baby. We knew it was early, that most people waited longer after getting married, especially at our age. But we both had this deep desire for a child in our hearts, so we decided to give it a shot. I remember reading an article that said the average time it takes to conceive is six months and thinking, “There’s no WAY I would be able to wait more than six months, we better get going!”

And then a year passed.

That winter I typed, jokingly, on our Christmas card, (before deleting it) “Despite their best efforts, Carter and Lindsey have failed to have a baby. Check back next year.” I felt that was all my year had been- a series of failed attempts to pursue a desire that has been banging around in my heart since I was small. To make matters worse, after trying and failing to conceive for a full year, a couple is officially medically labeled as “infertile.” Satan used those labels to suck me into believing that was my identity.  I thought the one thing that I should naturally be able to do had failed me. My body had betrayed me. God wasn’t listening to my prayers. I felt like I was being punished. I felt deeply, deeply alone.

Did you know that asking a young married couple when they are going to start having children could pierce like a dagger in the heart? These words sound harmless and are meant to show interest, but they can be brutal to more women than you might guess. We have a tendency in society to push each other to look towards what’s next. If you are dating, when will you get married? When are you going to upgrade your house or get that new car? If you have one child, when will you make it two? The idea behind asking these questions is good, desiring to enter in to each other’s lives in order to identify and encourage. But constantly pushing for the next thing can cause ones you care about to feel like where they are right now isn’t good enough. Over that first year of trying, I fell into a deep trap of believing I was not worthwhile because I had not yet achieved motherhood. Those close to us knew we were trying. Well meaning friends asked what the plan was, what we could do next, how we can push through to achieving our goal. The issue is that those questions do not leave room for what God is doing during the waiting time, how He is showing glory through our lives right now. It is easy to point to God’s goodness when we get something we want, but it means a whole lot more when we do it while we are waiting.

This lesson ended up taking me a long time to learn, because after a year and a half it was finally my time to make my big announcement. I was finally pregnant. We would be nine weeks pregnant at Christmas, the perfect time to tell our families our news. It was a time of pure joy, a precious pocket of weeks that I will never forget. Unfortunately, our first pregnancy was also our first loss. Our world crumpled—especially mine.

Three dark weeks of processing the pain followed. We had only begun to explore the depths of this loss when something shocking happened—I was pregnant again. It was the ultimate emotional whiplash. How could this be? I thought, Wow, first 17 failed months and now two pregnancies back to back? God must REALLY want us to have this baby! As terrified as I was of experiencing the same loss all over again, I didn’t think God would let me go through that pain again. My battered hope slowly regained confidence. The joy was still there, but this time was very different. We didn’t talk about names, didn’t plan for the due date, and didn’t think past the first two months. When the day of our first ultrasound finally arrived. I was thrilled and terrified. We prayed together fervently. I wrote letters to my sweet precious baby, telling of our love and excitement.  

At the ultrasound, two words destroyed the fragile hope we had rebuilt. “Something’s wrong.” My heart dropped, tears immediately started, and I just knew. Four excruciating days followed of waiting to hear back on tests to confirm the worst. I was miscarrying again. A week later, our second baby was gone.

The next few months were a blur of merely surviving. In a matter of three and a half quick months, I had become a mother of two precious babies in heaven. My grief was enormous. For really the first time ever, I questioned God’s promises for my life. Did he have a plan for me, for us? Why did he give us this deep desire to be parents only to rip it away from us, not once but twice so quickly? Did he not know how much we wanted those babies, how deeply they were loved in the short amount of time we had with them? Had I done something wrong? I sank deeper and deeper into doubt and fear. I succumbed to Satan’s lies and believed that this was all I would ever be: an invisible mother that was incapable of bringing her children safely into this world. My pain would never be understood, my babies would never be held, and I would forever bite back tears watching other parents effortlessly live out my most precious hopes and dreams.

I would still be in that darkness if it wasn’t for God’s sweet, perfect provision. As I questioned whether God had a plan for me, He was enacting a beautiful one that would lead to a sweeter and deeper relationship with Himself, my husband, and my someday babies.  Jesus had seen and counted every tear we shed over our lost children. He collected them in His hands and whispered in my ear, “I know, dear child. I have already made this right. I have gone before you and laid your path. Wait on my perfect timing.” 

He called me to Psalm 130:6, which says “I am counting on the Lord; yes, I am counting on him. I have put my hope in his word. I long for the Lord more than the watchman longs for the dawn.” As surely as the morning comes each day, God will come to me and deliver me from this broken and weary place of longing. He will make me new again, and my joy will overflow. So on the bad days—the days that I burst into tears upon hearing a pregnancy announcement or bite back bitter words of jealousy—even on those days, God’s promise for me is true. My emotions may overcome me and draw me into darkness, but the reality of Christ is that He does not leave us with our emotions being the final word. The creator of all things is in charge of my destiny. Only He can say what my future will hold: not doctors, not nosy onlookers, not my own most faithless and terrified thoughts.

Psalm 139 says, “You go before me and you follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. . . You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!” verse 5 and 16-17. If this God--the one who built me from scratch and gave me every longing--has created me to be a woman with arms desperate for a baby, then why would he withhold this from me? He wouldn’t. Nowhere in the bible does God give one of his people a longing and does not answer it. There are, however, lots of times when God gives a desire and then allows suffering, false starts, and years upon years of waiting before satisfying the thirst. There are many women in scripture that were for lengths of time infertile, Sarah being the best example. She had to wait for 80 years before she was given a child, far beyond childbearing years. But God is BIGGER than our human limitations. Genesis 21:1-2 proclaims, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” It was not Abraham and Sarah’s time, it was God’s, and their very lineage would eventually produce Jesus Christ. Their family line had multiple instances of years of childlessness. It was God’s timing that these women would have their children when they did in order to make sure that Jesus came to us at the exact right time. God’s timing allowed Christ to bridge the gap from our sin to Heaven, saving all of mankind. Uh, wow. That’s kind of an important thing, and it makes me glad that God did not answer their prayers for a child the first or thousandth time that they prayed them.

Now, I am not saying that I think we have suffered both infertility and multiple miscarriages because we are going to produce a messiah (duh.) But I am saying that God’s answers of “not yet,” and “not this child,” are ultimately for my good. Only God is sovereign, and His plans are perfect. God says to us in Isaiah 55:9, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Of course his plan for me is what is best. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “”For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.””

I know God hears my prayers for a child. Psalm 138:3 confirms, “As soon as I pray, you answer me; you encourage me by giving me strength.” Whether His answer is yes, no, or wait, He does not delay in answering my pleas and giving me strength to handle his answer. I may never know exactly why he allowed it to happen (until Heaven), but I do know that it was not to punish me or cause me pain. The only way we can grow is through suffering, and it was time for me to grow. He wanted to draw me closer to my husband and to himself, to let me know that even my good and right dream of a family would not satisfy my heart. He alone can create hope and joy in my life, and I need to look only to him.

 The first time I was pregnant, I felt extremely confident that I would be having a perfectly healthy baby in my arms in nine months. Even when things got shaky, I kept insisting in the emergency room that the doctor was going to come in and tell me my baby was doing great. I felt the Holy Spirit telling me, “I’ve got you. You and your baby are both going to be safe and fine.” So when the doctor told me that my baby had died in my womb, I felt like the God had betrayed me. How could he deceive me like this? But later my dad pointed out, “Lindsey, you are safe and fine. And guess what? Your baby is safe and fine.” It is true; my baby was now in the safest and most glorious place possible. God had created and then brought our sweet, precious, perfect child back to himself. As a mother, all that I could ever want for my children is for them to be cared for, loved, and protected. No one can do this better than God, as much as I wanted the opportunity to try. I’m quite sure that Carter and I would have done a bang up job loving that baby fiercely, but we are nothing compared to our maker and Heavenly Father.

It has been a while since our losses, and it is not true what they say. Time does not heal all wounds; God heals all wounds. Thanks to God’s loving provision of his word, caring family, understanding friends, and wise mentors, I have come to place of expansive healing. When we lost the second pregnancy, my mentor asked me, “Do you think you could heal from this without getting pregnant again?” That was a tough question for me, because I felt like the only way I got over the first loss was the promise of the second pregnancy. What if there wasn’t a third? What if motherhood for me only ever was the promise that I would hold my babies someday in Heaven? Well, if that were to be true, I would still be safe and fine. I would still have God’s love for me, Christ’s sacrifice covering my sin with holiness, an eternity to spend in perfect light and love. But God gave me this promise, and his word does not return void. Hours after our first miscarriage was confirmed, my husband and I looked into each other’s tear stained eyes and realized that we felt closer than we ever had before. Despite it being the worst day of our lives so far, God was giving us glimpses of himself. That kind of steadfast love simply does not fail.

I believe with every fiber of my being that we are going to get to experience the joy of parenthood here on planet earth. It takes work, a sometimes daily effort to set down my fear and pick up my faith.  But I have come to a point of believing that some day—maybe in nine months, maybe in 15 years—I will hold a living and breathing, precious child of my own. Someday you will see me with a pregnant belly, and I can GUARANTEE that no matter the pain or sleeplessness or stress you see on me, I will be the most infinitely ecstatic and joyful pregnant woman. Some day you will see me carrying my baby or holding the hand of my toddler, and I hope that it speaks of God’s faithfulness to you. The promises he has made for you is just as true as mine. Please know that you are loved, and despite your suffering you are being cared for. God’s work is always bigger than the darkness.

I thought about waiting to share this story with people until we were successfully awaiting a viable pregnancy, or until after we had had our first baby. But there are times when I hear stories of God’s enduring faithfulness after the fact and think, “Well that’s great for them, but what if my time never comes?” I want to share our story with as many people as I can so that they may see our faith and believe for themselves, too. Even if our happy ending is delayed, doesn’t come, or is totally different than we wanted, God is still good. Our faithfulness and hope will be rewarded when we meet Christ in heaven, whether or not we get to see the rewards on earth.  Our darkest times are when God puts us in the fire, reforms us, and brings us out holier, stronger, and more like himself. Rather than letting the fire destroy us, we need only to wait faithfully for God’s work to be done. Only through our weakness can his strength be shone.  

These words are my pausing to build an altar for God, to thank Him for His goodness to me and to show others what He has done. This place of healing and joy despite my circumstances is God bringing me into holy ground. I know that I am opening myself up to the possibility of more pain by allowing this to be a topic of conversation, but I Have felt called to share. Please know that you don’t need to hide your babies or pregnancies from me—God has multiplied my joy so that I can have it for you. Don’t feel like you need to say anything to me about it if you don’t feel comfortable, just knowing that you might share in my hope is enough. If you would be willing to pray, please pray for continuing patience and hope for our babes. If you are reading this and have suffered from miscarriage, infertility, or waiting for your baby for any amount of time--you are not alone. If you are waiting on God’s timing, know that the joy that is to come will overshadow all of the pain. Until then, we wait in hope.

How One Sentence Destroyed my Self-Worth.

I was sitting at the kitchen counter silently eating my lunch with the little boy I nanny when I had an important realization. It smacked so hard in the face that you would think I was a college girl who just found out that iPhone 6s were being handed out for free with pumpkin spiced lattes at the local Starbucks.

I had been innocently listening to my Pandora station of Jesus jams when, without warning, I was sucked into an intense worship session. I wasn't raising my hands, swaying back and forth, or even singing aloud at all for that matter--I was watching a three year old smear peanut butter all over his face and in his hair. Yet without a doubt, it was the best worship to God I have experienced in quite a while. As a professional musician, I often have a hard time worshipping, too often distracted by thinking about the music itself... which adds to the irony that I was able to zone out entirely and worship in a way that I hadn't in a long time over PB&Js with a three year old.

See, I have been having a silent (and seemingly weird) struggle lately. I am in the sweetest season of my life that I have ever reached, as shown below:

• I am saved by Jesus Christ and will live eternally in Heaven.
• I have a really, REALLY awesome husband and we enjoy an enriching and satisfying marriage. 
• I have not one, but two jobs that I enjoy and make me feel respected, needed, and that I am using my talents for good. 
• Carter and I like where we live and we get to spend a lot of time together
• I have this crazy thing called FREE TIME, which has been a foreign idea for the last six years. (Note, six years ago is when I had the immense need to grow up very quickly.) I even have  a social life these days.

So WHY have I been struggling lately with doubt, dissatisfaction, self-hatred, and fear? WHY all of this, when my life is indisputably better than it ever has before? Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about my life at all--I don't have anything missing. Yet these negative feelings have been tearing me apart from the inside out. Why?

The simple answer is because I am a sinner who will always sin and this manifests all over my life in ugly ways. But... I think the honest answer goes a deeper than that. 

Going through life in suburban, middle-class, "always-happy" midwest USA leads to a lot of people consistently smiling at you and asking questions like, "how are you?" and, "what's new in your life?" These questions are generally asked with good intentions, but without any interest in an answer longer than one sentence. So, without realizing it, I had been placing the precarious weight of my self-worth on this itty bitty one sentence response that I--like everyone else--delivered countless times in an off-hand manner without much reflection. I needed an interesting and important answer, one that would make people mark "noteworthy person" in their mental address book. 

And in the last six years, I always had one. 

"My mom is in the hospital."

"Going to college! Yowza!"

"I am taking 21 credits and working part time and have an internship, so I am basically on the edge of implosion at any second."

"I got dumped and am now all about exerting a lot of effort into hating him/getting other people to hate him and love me instead so that I can feel validated."

"I just went through six months of complete renewal of my faith, self-empowerment, and have basically become an entirely different person."

"I got engaged!"

"I AM GETTING MARRIED IN ______ DAYS!!!!!"

"I am a newlywed and I NEED to tell you why it's the best thing that could literally EVER happen to anyone who has ever lived. Ever. Literally."

"I'm writing my thesis and would honestly rather choose death."

"I graduated!"

"I have a cool new job!"

But lately, these exciting answers have come to a screeching halt and all I really have to talk about is crockpot recipes, home improvement, going to the library, and other equally dull and totally lame topics. This lack of a shiny, exciting sentence was making me feel like I was no longer important to people and, therefore, less valuable as a person.

My life coming to a sweet plateau should have made me turn my eyes to heaven with gratitude, but instead I started casting around for new things to fill the space. My "sentence struggle" merely represented the more troublesome reality that I was refusing to allow God to be enough, for His mercy and grace to be my identity. Instead of showing others I was humbled by God blessing me with peace and stillness, I was choosing to be bitter and hardened. I was acting as though life had stolen something from me instead of realizing the reality--that everything I have was given to me by God. 

So while I was eating my lunch with my three year old buddy, a song by All Sons & Daughters--one that I know quite well--sang the line, "The heartbeat of my life is to worship in your light." It is a line I have pondered many times and have tried to write across my life. 

Was worshipping God the most important thing to me--my very heartbeat? Was it showing in my actions and my words... in my sentence? It wasn't, and that was the root of all my heartache and dissatisfaction. 

Sitting there enjoying our PB&Js, I instantaneously realized all of this upon hearing that All Sons & Daughters line. I suddenly started smiling insanely--enough that Colton looked at me in his sweet three year old way and asked, "What is happy?" I just laughed and responded, "everything, buddy. Just everything."

And it truly was. 

Why Richard Strauss Made Me Question Humanity Today.

This morning's Music and Politics class was a lot to process. We began talking about Richard Strauss and his unfortunate circumstance of being a composer with Jewish family whose music Hitler happened to be fond of. It deeply surprised me that Hitler was fond of such a shocking and polarizing opera like Strauss' Solome, which features adultery, incest, nudity of minors, and the kissing/serenading of the decapitated head of John the Baptist. We discussed his precarious position and whether or not his involvement with the Nazis was more of selfish desires or survival instinct. The discussion was prompted by our responses to "Death Fugue," a chapter of music critic Alex Ross' provocative book, "The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century." The chapter reflects on whether or not there is a truly 'Nazi sound' in the music of early 20th century Germany.

The conversation, though, turned to music in concentration camps. This rapidly spiraled down an upsetting path that lead to harrowing stories of unimaginable cruelty. One story in particular took place in a concentration camp where the marginalized were in an exercise yard, listening to their fellow jews play in a string quartet when one woman stumbled. A guard immediately released one of his dogs to set upon the woman and tear her to shreds. "If you were the second violinist in the string quartet, what would you do?" asked Dr. Saylor. "Keep playing," responded one of my classmates, who just so happens to be Jewish.

Saylor then eloquently poised that this, this surely is true evil. Being forced to watch something so horrific and have no choice but to watch and keep playing, something that seems impossibly trivial... this is what destroys a soul. This is evil. I was left feeling entirely unfulfilled when he didn't go on to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, but that's just me.

"What is your response hearing this?" Saylor prompted. The class was silent. We looked at our books, fidgeted with pens, pulled on our scarves. I wondered if the girl next to me was crying or sniffling from the cold. What a profoundly impossible question.

My response was wanting to cry, laugh, tear my clothes, run from the room, and change the world all at once. I wanted to proclaim "Praise the good and merciful Lord that this world is not my home! I do not belong to this gruesomeness, to my own sinful nature, to the corruption of this world!" I didn't, though, and the moment passed. I put my head down on the table.

Someone else responded and said, "It seems like I am just hearing a story. Like this is a fairy tale and could never be true."

"It makes me realize that there is no way the Nazis viewed them as human beings. It is impossible to do this when you know that they are people."

Yet another said, "It makes it feel like less of a story when I realize that this was less than 100 years ago. Humanity has existed for a few thousand years, and this was less than 100 years ago."

In response, someone said "It doesn't seem real because of how far the world has come. Think about how different we are than just seven years ago." I watched Dr. Saylor's face twitch. He then brought up the United States' Japanese concentration camps, Stalin's liquidation of Jews, genocide in Rwanda, and the recent genocides in Bosnia that happened in our lifetime. (Side note, my best friend growing up was a first generation immigrant Bosnian that fled to the US when she was 5.) I nodded sadly.

I left class today feeling a dense weight in my chest. I didn't want to look anyone in the eye as I walked away, yet wanted equally to talk to everyone; for us to go somewhere and have a debrief and watch a funny movie and hug each other. Instead of any of that, I decided to create.

When something happens that I cannot process, I have to write, paint, sing, make, touch, do anything with my hands that may produce something that did not exist before. I wrote, and wrote, and prayed, and pondered. At the end of it all, I came to this:

I want to raise children who are respectful, kind, curious, and good. I want to make other people happy for the rest of my days. I want to never give up on searching for the beauty in all things, and creating my own in every little way I can. I will serve my God for the rest of my days. Anything else is outside of my control.

I may mourn the lives lost in the Holocaust, but cannot change them. I can pull my hair at the nature of the human condition and weep for society. But I cannot change it. Instead, I can love every corner of the world that my little self comes in contact with and sleep well at night knowing that the creator I serve has ransomed me by name, and that His plans are beyond understanding.





(To Dr. Saylor when you read this, sorry about all the feelings.)

My Jesus Valentine... a story of timing, grace, and confession.

When I was six years old, I decided to "give my heart to Jesus." My wonderfully Christian parents had told me all about this activity, and how I would be saved. In my six-year-old mind, all I thought this meant was that I would not go to hell. I had no concept of heaven, grace, or Christ himself. But lo, the phrase was "give your heart," so I stubbornly waited until Valentines day to be saved from the fiery depths of hades.

So it was on 2/14/1998 that I sat with my parents at the dinner table and prayed for Jesus Christ to come into my life and be my Lord and Savior.

Now, Romans 10:9 (NIV) says "If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." The reason I state the version of this scripture is because I feel strongly about the fragility of this verse. These words from Paul are instructions to the christians of the church of Rome on Jesus' plan for salvation. In my six-year-old mind, it seemed pretty darn important to me that I do this thing correctly. What if I said "The Lord is Jesus?" Surely then my salvation would only be half adhered, and would fall off in time like a poorly nailed painting.

This was not the only flaw in my understanding of salvation. Nowhere in this verse did it say "... and you will be saved for good," "you will be saved for SURE for sure," or "you will be saved for keepsies." I therefore found it to be most prudent to confess my sins and ask Jesus to save me every night, and every time I remembered that I could go to hell. I would spend long stretches of my childhood time worrying that if I were to die after sinning and before remembering to ask to be saved, surely I would be damned.

My middle name is Grace. I never bothered to ask what Grace meant, or to explore its implications by any means. It wasn't until I was 17 years old and worked at a summer camp that God's true love and gracious intentions for me were revealed. Like scales removed from my eyes, I understood that God would never love me more or less than He did at that very moment. Whether I had killed a man that morning or spent those same hours within the confines of a church, God's love for me would be the same. There was nothing I could ever do to earn God's favor. Rather than cleaning myself up and appearing as my strongest self before the Lord, I needed to come to him dirty and broken, weak and helpless. Only in my most honest and stripped state--revealing all my shame and filth in its full glory--only then could I receive the true Grace of God.

grace  '(grs): n.

1. A favor rendered by one who need not do so; indulgence.
2. Giving of immunity or exemption; a reprieve.

• a. Divine love and protection bestowed freely on people.
• b. Mercy; clemency.

Salvation is falls under definition one... God need not save me. Is God giving me a reprieve? Well if we look at Romans 3:23 it is undeniable that I have sinned. And if we look at 6:23 we know that what I deserve for my sin is eternal damnation, a life apart from God and all that is righteous and good. The only man who had never sinned was brutally slaughtered, submitting to and even choosing this fate, to take away the punishment I deserve. My ransom is paid.

Oh. I believe this as truth. I say it out loud all the time. Does this mean that... am I...

BOOM! Radical, free, amazing, jolting, life-altering Grace is MINE! I don't have to do anything else. I am saved! Praise God almighty. I am His creation of beauty, and He sees me as white as snow! I am His daughter, His princess. I stand before God and he sees me in the white robes that belong to Jesus. Despite all my wretched sin that I will continue to draw toward myself for the rest of my human life, I am a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come. Praise Him! Praise Him forever!

Grace. Wow, how novel. Never knew.



I always wanted to get baptized on my 21st birthday... another of my sappy sentimental ideas. I wanted to wait until my adult life to take this step to ensure the decision to be of my own desire and will. But when my birthday plans didn't work out, I sort of let it go and figured I would do it eventually.

Now, all of a sudden, I hear Luke's voice saying, "So what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name!" (Acts 22:16)

I am getting baptized this Sunday.

I Sing Because I Have to: Confessions of a music major who hates performing and does not love music.

I sing because I have to. And not in the "I love music so much that I simply cannot remain silent and burst at the seams until my vocal folds are producing angelic, involuntary sounds!" sort of way. (Statement to be read in a soprano voice.)

I do music because it is, well, something I have always done. I was in choir at church when I was little because my mom thought I would be really cute as a singing, dancing angel in the Christmas program. I did choir at recess in elementary school because I wasn't athletic enough to play kickball and wanted to be saved the shame. I continued choir in middle school because I was not being academically challenged and did not need the extra study hall.

I did show choir from seventh grade on because my sister did it. I wasn't great at blazing my own path due to social anxieties, and therefore found it easier to follow in her footsteps and be known as "Chelsea's little sister." I continued music in high school because it was the only way for me to have friends.

I made music my passion (again in the soprano voice) as high school progressed because these later teen years were meant to be used for self-discovery. Everyone was busy figuring out who they were and what they were good at, so I fell back on the comfortable option. I milked it for all it was worth--proclaiming to the world that music was a part of my very soul, my identity. (Did you know that I'm a soprano?)

I studied voice at Drake from the time I was a sophomore in high school, so when college decisions came along, it was a no-brainer. I knew my way around the campus, had met some of the faculty, and knew I could sing well enough to be accepted but not the star of the show. Do you see my ingrained, irrational fear of change surfacing in my decision making yet?

The facade cracked during the second semester of college (I was a music education major at this point.) I realized that I was on track to become a middle school band teacher somewhere in the middle of nowhere Iowa, most likely with a drinking problem and distinct lack of satisfaction in life. These fears were largely unsupported speculations, yet they plagued me until I changed my major to Music Business (...an even more ambiguous field of unstable careers.)

I also realized around this time that I hated performing. I despised it. It made my stomach churn and my hands shake. It inflamed my already present anxiety disorder to the point of paralysis.

I changed my major, yet again, the summer before my junior year. Having been dropped unceremoniously from the voice studio of the woman I had been studying with for five years for no reason other than my performance anxiety, I found myself at a distinctive fork in the road. It would have been very easy to quit and pick a new major, whittling away a lifetime of musical involvement into a compact and forgettable music minor. I could have walked away and chalked it all up to a series of cowardly decisions by a mediocre musician.

So why didn't I? It wasn't for a lack of options--I am, in fact, much better at many things other than music. I have excelled in writing, painting, leadership, public service, and communication more than I ever did in music and could have majored in any of these fields. No, alas, in coherence with my pattern of apathy and fear driven decision making, I did not change my major because doing so would have been scary, overwhelming, and honestly a lot of work that I just really didn't want to do. I, therefore, settled for a BA major in music and figured I would graduate on time and end up with a degree at least, even if I would never use it to acquire a job in the prescribed field.

Somehow, in the middle of this sob-story, music began to reveal truths of life to me. In a weird, ironic way, not being so good at music while immersed in it taught me how to handle some of the intricacies and challenges in life. I understood from early on that life has big risks and potential for big disappointments. I readily embraced hard work and pride in achievement and a finished product. I had a very realistic view of the challenges of working as a team toward an end goal bigger than oneself. I was faced with moral conundrums and the necessity for self-discipline. I learned the power of asking for help. I learned humility.

Without my knowledge, music did become my identity--although not in the anticipated way. Singing brought to light the things in life I stand for, the people I need to surround myself with, and the rocks I have to lean upon when trials come.

It was by sheer, dumb luck that I ended up where I should have been all along. I love the bachelors of music because of the emphasis on history and academia of music. I resonate with the controlled, writing-focused tasks and enjoy exploring the polarization and varying views within music scholarship. I love the fact that even as a mediocre musician and only slightly-above-average-due-to-uniqueness-of-vocal-quality singer, I can still impact the field. My brain, gut, extensive vocabulary, and unintentional years in the world of music all combine to make me a notable scholarly researcher and critic of music. Even though I never made all-state, never got any of the solos I tried out for, didn't make Drake choir my freshman year, am not a member of chamber choir, once got a D in ear training, am not in the opera, and have never ONCE in my life been brought to tears strictly by a musical performance--I still can function well as a wannabe musicologist and find enjoyment in the process.

I will still say that I do not love music. I love my fiancé, I love my dear friends, I love my family, and I love Jesus Christ. I might even love paint and coffee, but I do not love music. Instead, I have a deep respect and awe for music and a profound curiosity for its intangibility, fluidity, spectrum, uses, and influence. I have a kinship with music and musicians, a nostalgia attached to performance garb and back-stage bonding. Even though music has not functioned as the cliché "passion" you are meant to pursue in college, I do not regret my collegiate path whatsoever and am actually quite excited to earn my BA in music degree.

My dad always says to me that if you're lucky, the thing you learn most about in college is yourself.
Music was the avenue for this self enlightenment to happen for me in college. Music gave me the courage I needed to explore other "scary" things I am drawn to; such as writing, painting, yoga, worship, building a family, and discipleship. Who knows where my paycheck will end up coming from, and who cares? One way or another, I will follow my gut and God will provide. I have a new courage, thanks to music, to pursue whatever moves me and to let the rest fall into place.

I will always be grateful to music and will continue to make it for the rest of my life. True, you will never see me on stage as an opera star or read my critical review of the New York Philharmonic.
However, you better believe that you will hear me singing lullabies to my children, humming silly made-up songs, worshiping my God, and otherwise following the love in my life--wherever it may take me.

Total Gratitude

Today I am in complete and total awe of God's goodness to me. He created me beautiful, a being founded in His image. He wanted me to be like Him, so that I could readily see and accept His power, glory, beauty, and grace. My soft hands show the juxtaposition of His that were roughly worked and brutally nailed to a cross. My mutilated and sinful soul is a mirror into the holiness that is Christ. My unknowing eyes reflect the knower of all things, the creator of infinity.

The Lord gave me a wicked sense of curiosity. I look at the world and instantly want to tear into why things are the way they are, who people are to their very core. I have a distaste for smalltalk and search for conversations that uncover what people believe in tips of their toes and depths of their souls. I thirst for words, text, speeches, research, sermons, music, art, and anything else that can show me the God that I serve.

He has blessed me with the spiritual gift of prophesy; that I can look into a situation and know what needs to be done. I seek justice with ferocity and speak up under all circumstances. My fists fly with precision and my words are strong and steady. He lets the spirit flow through me so that I can be but a humble and broken tool for his work.

He forgives me when my gifts cut others with the double edged sword, the way I can hurt with my best intentions. He wipes away moments where I trip into being overly convictive and too harsh. He breaks my spirit when I begin to grow pride.


He gave me wild hair and big eyes. He gave me a funny button nose and ears that are two different levels. He gave me a body that doesn't hold me back or limit me to any disabilities. I can run, laugh, sing very loudly and with lots of heart. I am flexible, healthy, energetic, and youthful. He gave me little fingers to wear my engagement ring with awe. I have dexterity and can play a piano and tie my shoes without help. I can grip a paintbrush and change my very world with the depths of colors. He gave me freckles and beauty marks and perfect little imperfections.

My life on earth has not been held back by poverty, disability, government, phobias, persecution, or chronic illness. He has provided me a bed, a roof, a sense of home. I have never been without and I have never been hungry. I have never lined up outside of a soup kitchen or asked for change on a subway. I have never sat in a classroom and not been able to read or comprehend the words on the board. I have never been cold in the winter or worn clothes that were not clean. The Lord has given me a bounty and it is with sovereignty that He takes away.  He heals my illnesses and treats my mental disorders as moments where he can shine through my mortality.


He sees my weaknesses as opportunities for Him to be glorified. He allows me to suffer so that I can understand compassion. He allows pain in my life so that I will look toward Heaven. He allows me to feel confused, hurt, and betrayed so that I will know that He is the way, the truth, and the life. He lets me be ostracized, excluded, and completely alone so that I will know that this world is not where I belong.

I brag for my King.

I brag for my King, that I am one of His children. He has paid for my ransom, and chose me long before I was born. He sent Christ to be hung on a tree specifically for my very life. I will never have a reason to give up on life, because God is my very reason to live. He promises with the strongest covenant known and unknown to man that he will NEVER leave me or forsake me.

I am HIS. I belong to my sweet Messiah. I belong to God, my Lord, my Father, my Creator, Yahweh, Yeshua, the Prince of Peace, Elohim, the Light, El-Shiddai.

May my voice will never be silenced with songs of His worship. May my hands never stop doing His labor. May my arms never stop embracing others in love. May my eyes never stop looking toward my home, my heaven.

May my lips never cease whispering my gratitude.  

The Reason.

A deep, deep breath fills your entire lungs, all the way to the bottom, to the intercostals, into your back. It is crisp and cool. After a long time of tense muscles and struggle to remain balanced, your hands join together and lips utter "namaste." Cool pillows, warm hugs, safe homes.

The human condition is filled with really beautiful moments. Moments of repose, peace, and clarity. The are interspersed between hours, lifetimes, seconds of the grind-- pain and mediocrity.

In the gospels, there are many recordings of Jesus healing men and women by the touch of his hand or sound of his voice. Fatal diseases and lifelong struggles were gone. The blind could see, the paralyzed could walk. In my own life, prayer for healing is something I am constantly seeking.

The afflictions of depression and anxiety run deep in my life. More than just a mess of pills and doctors appointments and constantly feeling tired. My mind occasionally stops in its tracks and drops all of my rational thoughts through the floor. My emotions slam into overdrive and I am suddenly governed by visceral, tangible, flighty, raw feelings.

What a terrible word, "feelings." feelings. feelings.

My body and mouth become void of my soul, functioning on their own. My words jump into superspeed and tumble to the floor, like a pile of film suddenly exposed to the light. They shake and change to glass, flying across the room. Almost always, there is someone I love in the path.

My eyes bulge, fascinated by what I am seeing. Detached, I am curios and awed by the movement.

When it is over, I find myself sitting on my own bed, confused by the offended face staring at me and my own tears on my cheeks. I know it was me. It was all my fault. I am overcome with sorrow, and put another pebble in the pile.

The pebbles nearly reach the ceiling, each one a representation. They all hold a mistake. Reasons for my self hatred. I fill up the spaces of my life with these stones and carry them around in my pockets.

So I pray. I pray relentlessly to touch the robe of Jesus Christ. For Him to look at me and say "Get up and walk, my daughter, for you have been healed."

The Lord is all powerful and completely gracious, and I yearn for him with all my being. So here I am, ready to be healed. Help me almighty God-- I cry out to you! The shouts echo around me.

Yet I am continually answered with either no or wait. I don't know which. Is it wrong for me to keep praying to be healed? When should I simply pray to be accepting of my diseases? Am I an amputee praying for the regrowth of my arm? I have no idea.

So when brief moments of peace flutter into my life, I do not take them for granted. I savor the quiet, the calm. I sit with a smile on my lips and soak in the warm sun. Because of these struggles I see so much beauty in unconventional places. The ticking of a clock. The colors of light. The way he smells.

I know that God loves me more than my own mind can understand. He looks at me like a lover, a father, a creator. He knows the hairs on my head and every breath I take. Whenever I have a panic attack, He reminds me that I was never in control in the first place. When I throw fists at Him, He whispers "You are beautiful." He replaces my room full of pebbles with scripture and love.


I am a chaotic mess most of the time. I am a cracked bowl, an empty cup.

But that's the point then, really, isn't it?

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 
-2 Corinthians 12:9

I will continue to pray for God to heal me, but more than that I will pray for HIS perfect and sovereign will to be done. Calm is only found amid the chaos. Joy can only surface among a sea of suffering.



Only through destruction can there be beauty.