Musings on life, parenting, Jesus, and more...

I ran away from home when I was 15 years old, two days before Christmas if I remember correctly. One of the many reasons Christmas is a hard time of year for me. It was my sophomore year of high school but I hadn't really been going. My mom had allowed me to move in with my boyfriend and his mom (who also had teenage twin sons  and a daughter a few years younger). My boyfriend was a couple years older than me and had already dropped out of high school. They had moved to a city about 30-45 minutes away, in a different school district; she was fleeing domestic violence, not from the kids’ dad, but from her current boyfriend/husband.  I remember enrolling in the new school and going to a couple of classes but mostly I skipped school to hang out with the boyfriend. I think it must’ve been the school that contacted my mom for truancy, and somehow she made me come back home.  I was so angry and hurt at everything that had happened up to that point (mom leaving our family in Nor...

27  years ago, right before Christmas, I ran away from home. I was 15 years old at the time. I wouldn’t learn who Jesus was for another 5 years, but I know now that it’s only by His grace that I am alive today. I know it’s time to tell my story, to give my testimony of what God has brought me out of. It’s a little scary for me to put this out there for all to read, but I need more than anything right now to focus on the goodness of God and his ability to rescue us from even the darkest of situations. If I never talk about what he brought be out of, I’m not allowing that goodness to be realized in my life or in the lives of others who might be going through similar experiences. When I was 12 years old, my mom left my dad, my little sister, and me, and moved from North Idaho to Branson, Missouri. The time leading up to that and the months after are kind of a void in my memory. I know I was in 7 th grade. I know I was caught shoplifting and had to do community service. I know I was ...

My girls are the same age right now that my sister and I were when my mom left us (and my dad) in North Idaho and moved half way across the country to Missouri.  Probably until my mid-30’s, I believed that I was the problem in my family. I was the bad kid, the troublemaker, the mean one, the screw up, the reason my mom left, the reason my dad didn’t want me, the reason our family didn’t work out… a disappointment and a failure.  I mean, if your own mother doesn’t want you, that does some serious psychological damage that I’ve had to work through since becoming aware of it as an adult.  I’ve been contemplating “family” a lot lately. My oldest daughter just joined a new volleyball team and the coach teaches them that they are family. What does that mean for them? They encourage each other and build each-other up.  They support each other.  They have confidence in each other.  They know that they are better together than any of them could be individually on t...