I’ve heard it a hundred times, in the worst weeks of my life, from people who meant it with their whole heart. And I never once knew what to do with it.

When the floor falls out from under you, you can barely name what day it is, let alone what you need. The need is everywhere and nowhere. It isn’t a list — it’s a fog. And “let me know if you need anything” asks you to walk into the fog, find a specific need, carry it back out, and then — the part nobody mentions — work up the nerve to ask a busy person to meet it.

That’s not one favor. That’s three jobs, and they all land on the person with the least left to give them.

So, the call never comes. Not because the help wasn’t wanted. Rather, asking was one more thing I couldn’t do.

The people I actually remember

The second time I had to learn the word widow, I don’t remember a single person who asked me what I needed. I remember the ones who didn’t.

I remember the person who started taking my garbage cans to the curb on trash day — no note, no text, just done, week after week, because they’d noticed I kept forgetting. I never asked. I’m not sure I ever properly thanked them. I just stopped having to think about it, and that was its own kind of mercy.

There were others. The friend who showed up with a rotisserie chicken and a sleeve of paper plates so I wouldn’t have to cook or wash up. The one who sat on my couch and didn’t need me to be a good host. The person who texted, “I’m at the store buying you milk and bread — what kind?” A question I could actually answer, because it had limits.

None of them made me find the need. They decided it for me. They looked at a woman who was going under, picked one small, obvious thing, and just did it.

Don’t wait for the call

If someone you love is in the thick of it, here’s the kindest thing I can share: don’t wait to be told. The call isn’t coming. Not because they don’t need you — because need, in that season, can’t pick up the phone.

Instead, pick a thing with boundaries. Mow the lawn. Drop off dinner you don’t expect to stay for. Take the trash to the curb. Send the money without strings attached. Text “I’m bringing coffee Tuesday at nine, leave the door unlocked” — a plan, not a question. Decide the need for them, the way someone once decided it for me.

You’ll be scared of overstepping. Do it anyway. I have never once resented someone for showing up with food I didn’t ask for. I’ve only ever been humbled by it and grateful for it.

Grace runs both directions

And if you’re the one in the fog right now — I want to say something to you that took me years to actually mean.

The people fumbling around you with their “let me know if you need anything” are not failing you. They’re scared. They love you, and they have no idea where to put it, so it comes out clumsy. That sentence is often just love that was never taught what to do with its hands.

Let them off the hook. They didn’t know. Most of us don’t, until we’ve been the one in the fog and learned it the hard way. Case in point, I used to say it too, until I came face-to-face with the emptiness of it.

The friend who says the unhelpful thing this week might be the same one who learns, next time, to simply show up — partly because you were gracious enough not to hold the first fumble against them.

So, this week, go be the one who shows up. And if you can’t yet — if you’re still in the fog — let the fumbling ones love you anyway.

Because I think this is close to how I’ve been carried, within the seasons I couldn’t ask for a thing. God never once stood at the edge of my life and said let Me know if you need anything. He just came in. Took the proverbial trash to the curb of my actual mess. He sat with me on the couch and didn’t need me to host Him.

That’s the kind of help that saved me. Not the offer. The showing up.

I saw them standing nearby. They looked to be mother and daughter, laughing and chatting while they combed through the endless apparel. All at once, a thought permeated my brain — one I wanted to scream to them, to anyone who would listen. What are you looking for today? Updating your wardrobe, perhaps? Me? Oh — I’m just here picking out a dress to wear to my husband’s funeral.

Obviously, they had no idea that’s what I was doing. We never spoke a word to each other. “They” could have been me at another time in my life. And the reverse was just as true: any one of them could have been a version of what I was in that moment — walking around looking for an outfit to wear to a loved one’s funeral. I never would have known it.

It might seem absurd to let a single thought saturate my entire being for those few moments. But that one thought permanently changed me. It left an indelible mark on my character — one I’m thankful for, at least now.

The rebuilding that follows any tragedy, loss, or hard event has certain obvious elements, depending on the type of loss. Someone might be rebuilding a bank account after bankruptcy, while someone else is restoring a family torn apart by divorce. In my case, the rebuilding took on both of those elements — and more — following my husband’s suicide.

With the loss of his income, our bank account suddenly looked bleak. With his absence in our home, our family dynamic shifted so much that we had to figure out our new roles in this mother/daughter duo. Most importantly, I discovered some ugly pieces of my character that needed to be rebuilt — a complete gutting, a reconstruction of qualities that had lived in me for so long. Qualities that were not only difficult to admit, but that, I’m sure, displeased my Savior.

Those character elements were seldom obvious to the people whose lives intersected with mine. Truthfully, I was known as a sweet, often soft-spoken woman who would give the shirt off her back to anyone who needed it. That was mostly true. But it was the thoughts I allowed to take up residence in my mind that nobody knew about.

I was very judgmental, silently condemning those I felt superior to. I criticized everything — if only in my thoughts: the way they parented their children, how clean they kept their homes, even how they conducted themselves in public. It’s embarrassing to admit now. But I’m thankful God revealed it to me, beginning with that shopping trip for my funeral dress.

The lightbulb went on in that moment, when I realized the other shoppers had no idea what I had just walked through — no idea about the grief-stricken heart breaking within me. To them, I was probably just another shopper. Or maybe they never truly noticed me at all.

Now when I encounter people in public — especially the ones who aren’t all that congenial — I catch myself thinking, you don’t know what they might be carrying to make them act this way. When I see someone who looks as if they’ve recently been crying, I offer up a silent prayer, asking God to meet them in their need.

And the rebuilding didn’t stop there. Whenever a judgmental thought enters my mind now — even one about people near and dear to me — the Holy Spirit gives me an immediate check, and I lay the thought down and take it captive. It has no place in my life anymore.

I love these changes God has produced in me. It was hard work to endure the season in which He reshaped the woman I had become into the woman He created me to be. But on the other side of it, I’m so thankful.

As long as I live in this earthly shell, I’ll never be able to completely eradicate every imperfect thought. Only one perfect person ever walked this earth. But the new me catches a glimpse of the way God sees us — the woman laughing with her daughter and the one buying a dress for a funeral, both at once, both fully seen. These days, by grace, I’m slowly learning to look at people the way He does.

Nothing pleases me more than planning a big party for one of my kiddos to celebrate the day they were born. In the case of my four youngest, it’s even more special, because I wasn’t there the day they actually made their grand debut. My late husband and I adopted all four of them.

While we don’t do big parties every year, I’ve always wanted to make the milestone birthdays even more special — if the kiddo we’re celebrating actually wants a big to-do, that is. The ones that tend to earn the extra effort are the 10th, 13th, 16th, and 18th.

I’ll research ideas on Pinterest, then spend hours hunting down the perfect party-food recipes to match the theme, of course. I settle on decorations and work hard to either make them myself or find them for the lowest possible price. For me, part of the fun is finding an economical way to still throw a really special bash for a really special kiddo.

It took me years to understand why I was so intent on making all holidays special, but birthdays most of all.

As a January baby, my birthday was often overlooked or barely celebrated when I was growing up. The reason my parents gave was that it fell just after Christmas, and there simply wasn’t money left to do much else. I only vividly remember two of my childhood birthdays: my 5th and my 13th. The 5th was at a local Pizza Hut, and I thought getting a behind-the-scenes tour of the kitchen was about the most special thing in the world.

My 13th stood out for a different reason. We were deep in dysfunction, at the beginning of what I’d later realize was the end of the family I’d been raised in. My dad had spent months in a mental health facility, and he was home for a short visit and brought gifts for my birthday. My favorite was the first cassette tape I ever owned. A lot of you reading this have probably never held one.

I’m sure they celebrated my other birthdays. I guess they did. But the memories simply aren’t there.

As I got older, the excuse I’d been given landed differently. Yes, my birthday followed the most expensive holiday of the year. But it fell on the same date every single year, and I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t just plan for it. Couldn’t they budget for it like ordinary parents?

The truth is, my bitterness was never really about the missing gifts or the party. It stemmed from not feeling special. From not feeling important enough to be celebrated. From believing I wasn’t worth even one day set aside for just me.

So I made myself a promise: whenever I had children, I would never let them feel “less than” on their birthday. I’ve tried hard to keep it. Now that some of my children are older and married, I’ve handed that privilege off to their spouses, as it should be — and thankfully, they all do it well.

As an adult, my birthdays have been hit or miss. In the years I had a husband, my day was treated as exactly that — special. My solo-parenting years, not so much. The exception was my 40th. It was my first birthday as a widow, and a handful of dear friends pulled off the most epic surprise party. I’ll never forget it — especially how cherished I felt.

I had always pictured my 50th being a grand event. Even without a party like my 40th, I imagined a special trip, or something over-the-top to mark the milestone. I’d thrown my own mother a surprise party for her 50th — I even pulled the last of it together from a hospital room, next to my very sick three-month-old daughter.

Instead, it passed like any other day. To say I was disappointed — and, truthfully, a little hurt — would be an understatement. One precious local friend did stop by with a surprise cake and a few goodies. I couldn’t believe she remembered. Had she not, you’d never have known anyone in my house was having a birthday, let alone the big 5-0.

As I’ve entered this season of rebuilding my life again — after decades of grief, trauma, and mistakes — I’ve chosen a different stance on my birthday. If I hadn’t, the ache of feeling forgotten would rob the day of any joy at all.

I noticed I’d start sinking in the days leading up to it. Knowing it would probably pass like any other, I think the low was my body’s attempt to protect me from the letdown. It mostly failed. The bitterness was all-consuming, and I’d catch myself getting short with my kids in the days around it. I’m not proud of that. I’m just telling the truth about where I was.

I still believe birthdays are meant to be special. It’s the one day of the year set aside to celebrate someone simply for being born. To honor them for being here. To cherish that they exist. And yet — I can’t let the absence of a card or a cake derail the day, or the ones around it.

I know God sees me as the apple of His eye. He knew that day well — the one He knit His handiwork into existence. I don’t think He’s asking me to pretend the hurt isn’t there. I think He’s asking me not to let it harden into bitterness.

Rebuilding in these years after 50 has meant taking intentional steps to celebrate my birthday, however I feel led to. I choose to make it memorable — maybe a pedicure and lunch at a favorite restaurant. Maybe a little overnight trip. Maybe something spontaneous. Whatever it is, it’s my way of making the day special, regardless of what anyone else does or doesn’t do.

My choice is intentional. It has to be. Otherwise, bitterness would take root again, and nobody wins when that happens.

For you, it may not be a birthday at all. Maybe it’s another kind of overlooking — a wound someone handed you, or one you handed yourself. Whatever it is, bitterness works the same way. It puts down roots. And roots have to be dug up before anything new can grow where they were.

So take the next right step. Forgive, if there’s forgiving to do. Celebrate yourself — your survival, your small wins — even if you’re the only one who shows up to do it. You are worth a day set aside. You always were.

My dear friend, Lorie, would be the one leading the trip. That made my sense of feeling unqualified a little less daunting. Lorie is a petite woman but a spiritual giant.

In addition to not feeling up to the task of serving on this particular team — one packed full of godly women far more capable than I am — I also had never flown across the pond before, let alone to the vast African continent. I had been out of the country a few times, but it was never to places that involved crossing the width of an entire ocean.

Nevertheless, I prayed about it and ultimately agreed to go. One other small hurdle to overcome — the trip would cost $4,000, and we were all responsible for paying our own way, even if it meant fundraising to make it happen.

When we were about six weeks out from leaving, I received news that both elated and petrified me. Lorie found out she was pregnant, after seven years of unexplained infertility! When she shared the news with me, I was beyond thrilled for her to be adding to her sweet family. I hadn’t even thought about her role on the mission trip, and what that would look like in reference to her newly discovered pregnancy. It didn’t hit me, until she spoke —

(Most of these words are my paraphrase, but the ones I won’t forget her literally speaking are in quotes.)

Leah, I am so excited about this pregnancy! I’m still shocked that this is actually happening. But, in spite of my joy, I’m a little disappointed I won’t be able to lead the mission trip anymore. At my current age, this pregnancy is considered more high-risk, and I don’t want to take the chance of something happening to me physically and be half-way across the world without access to the medical care we have here.

I’m sure you can picture the change in my countenance about now. I was disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to go to Liberia, but I completely understood Lorie’s legitimate concerns. I had waited this long to go to Africa; I could keep waiting.

I didn’t have to wait as long as I thought. In her next breath, Lorie continued speaking. While I won’t be able to lead the trip anymore, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to still happen as planned. Unfortunately, a few of the women have had to back out for various reasons, but there are still a few of you able to go. “And — I would like for you to lead the trip.”

What in the world? Me? I couldn’t possibly be hearing her correctly. She knows I’ve never been on an overseas mission trip. For that matter, as I’ve already established, I’ve never even been overseas at all. And — there was the money thing — I still was shy of the $4,000 requirement, even with my fundraising efforts.

In the spirit of brevity, I’ll jump to the point. Lorie was having none of my excuses. I agreed to pray about it for a day or two, but, deep within, I already knew. I would go and serve in her place as the trip leader. Lorie knew it too.

The fundraising story could be a post all of its own, but let me just share this much. Yes, God did provide the $4,000. Right down to the last dollar and on the last day. Literally, the day the money was due, I was short $500. That morning, I received an unexpected $100 gift from a family member. Within the same hour, some friends from church stopped by my office at work, indicating they wanted to help with the expenses of the trip. They asked if I had met the goal yet, and when I shared that I had not, they asked how short I was of the $4,000. I shared that I still needed $400.

You guessed it. They provided the last $400. I now had no excuses to prevent me from flying to Africa in just a few short weeks.

That particular June day in 2010, I said goodbye to my daughter and husband, and I boarded a plane in Charlotte, NC. I was on my way to Newark, NJ to catch my international flight and meet the other two women I’d be serving with in Liberia. Yes, two! There would only be a total of three of us going now, but we were still going!

Before I tell you the end of this part of the story (there’s so much more I could share and will another time), I need to explain what we were going to be doing on this trip. We were leading five days of conferences for Liberian women all over their little country. In addition to teaching them biblical truths, we were going to spend the afternoon pampering them in make-shift spa sessions. Many of these women had been badly abused as a result of cultural norms. We were there to be the hands and feet of Jesus, not just in words but also in actions.

My only problem at this point was that I had no idea what I was to speak on. None whatsoever! As a type A, very organized woman who likes to have everything well planned out in advance, this was deeply troubling to me. I finally settled it in my mind that I would figure that out on the long plane trip over there. Except, I didn’t.

I don’t know if it was nerves, or the lack of sleep, or perhaps even the distracting mixture of pungent smells I wasn’t prepared for on the last leg of our trip — whatever the reasons, I landed in Liberia late one evening, the evening before our first conference, and I still had nothing.

I can almost feel that level of anxiety rising in me all over again as I recall the panic I felt that first night in Africa. To make matters even more challenging, I didn’t have a computer with me to type on, as it would have done me no good then. There was no internet, no printer to print out my notes, even if I had typed them. All I had was my Bible, a pen, and a notepad. Turns out, it was enough.

Suddenly, my spiritual eyes could see clearly. God began showing me in His Word what I was to teach on, and I started writing. I wrote furiously, but I handwrote everything. No clean typed notes. No fancy binder to contain them. No outline to help with my delivery. Just God’s message to His Liberian daughters in my handwritten chicken-scratch, that I would be presenting in a few short hours.

God taught me about one of His Old Testament judges I knew by name but had never really spent much time digging into his story — Gideon. In studying Gideon, I could sense this was not just a message for the Liberian women — this was also a message for me.

God first appeared to Gideon when he was threshing wheat within the confines of a cave in hopes the Midianites would not discover them and attack and ravage their crops again. Not only had Gideon and his fellow Israelites had about enough of the devastating Midianite attacks, but apparently God also determined they had been punished long enough for their disobedience to Him — an oppression that had lasted seven years.

As He appeared to Gideon that historic day, through one of His angels, the angel greeted him by calling him “mighty warrior.” God’s use of that term when greeting Gideon is significant. He asked Gideon to prepare his men because he was going to lead his army into battle against the dreaded Midianites. And — not only that — the Israelites would win!

Gideon began offering up excuse after excuse why he couldn’t possibly be expected to do such a task: he was just a simple wheat thresher, he was from the weakest clan in his tribe, and he considered himself the least in his family. But, but, but… he seemed to have all the reasons in the world why God must be making a mistake.

Yet — God never makes mistakes. He had already pronounced him a mighty warrior, though he hadn’t stepped one foot into the battle. God was making Gideon into what He was preparing him to be — a victor, a champion, courageous, a leader — a MIGHTY WARRIOR.

Similarly, when the first mention of the mission trip to Liberia came up, I also didn’t feel qualified. I had never traveled that far; I didn’t have the money; there were others far more qualified than me; I certainly didn’t have the leadership qualities to take on that role either.

God didn’t want me relying on my own strength. It wasn’t about what I could do; it was about what He could and would do through me.

Gideon did defeat the Midianites, with an army of only 300 men.

I did give the message God gave me in Africa after using only a Bible, pen, and notepad.

The lessons I learned through all of that, from the time I first felt unqualified to even consider going and through every step of the journey — God was always there, working as only He does. He never gave me what I needed ahead of time, but He always gave me what I needed in His perfect time.

It would be less than a year later that I would lose my husband to suicide. Six years after that, I would lose another husband to a sudden illness. Additional tragic events have happened in my life since then. And yet — each time, God would remind me of Gideon. He would remind me that He was also making me into a mighty warrior, even if I couldn’t yet see it. Sometimes, my own disobedience would delay the victory. Other times, His mercy was immediate.

Whatever gripped you before, you were a mighty warrior.

Whatever has hold of you right now, you are a mighty warrior.

And when the next hard thing comes — and it will — you will still be a mighty warrior.

Before his death, whenever someone asked how many children we had, Joel would proudly say nine. End of story. He loved my daughter as if she were his own, and I felt the same way about his children. So, with our five biological children and the four we had recently adopted, we had nine.

Now, as someone who is extremely detail-oriented, whenever I was asked and subsequently answered that question, I had to go into greater detail to set the facts straight. My answer would go something like this: “We are a blended family with five combined biological children from our previous marriages. We recently adopted four younger children: three internationally and one through our local foster care community.”

Immediately after giving my wordy answer, I would regret that I couldn’t be as succinct as Joel and simply smile and say, “Nine.” Yes, the shocked faces would still be there, but I wouldn’t need to elaborate unless they asked.

In recent years, the question I felt the need to elaborate on looked a little different.

When getting to know someone new, a commonly asked question is, “Where do you work?”

As someone who worked from the age of fifteen until five months after Joel died, this question made me cringe. Even more so because I didn’t want to leave the last job I had — it simply became impossible to work full-time and care for my four special-needs children.

The sheer number of appointments I needed to take off for was problematic on its own. Then add in calls from the school over disciplinary issues I needed to confront right away. Or the call to come pick up the child who’d just thrown up in his classmate’s baseball hat (true story!). In those first five months of my second widowhood journey, it became evident I was going to need to resign. It simply wasn’t going to work.

Back to that familiar question — “Where do you work?” I didn’t want to say, “I don’t,” because I worked harder now than ever before. But my long-winded answer usually went something like this: “I currently don’t work outside the home, even though I’ve worked since I was fifteen. My husband recently passed away, and I was left with four young children we’d adopted, who all have varying levels of special needs. As a result, I can’t work full-time, and even part-time is a challenge right now.”

I could almost see their head spinning. They must have thought, all I did was ask her where she worked.

Oh — but there’s more.

This one is perhaps the most embarrassing. But why stop now?

The question that undoes me more than any other: when I’m out with my children — of which I’m typically the only adult in the group — I often get asked, “Are these your children?” I politely answer, “Yes, they are.” And then I go on to explain further. (You might already be shouting, “Why, Leah? Why the explanation?” And you’d be right to.)

I would say, “Yes, these are the four children my late husband and I adopted a little over a year before his sudden death, all with varying levels of special needs.”

Do you see what I did there? In one sentence — one breath, most of the time — I established that these children, who were likely misbehaving at the moment, had a behavioral or mental diagnosis that caused them to act that way. I established that I was a widow, and hadn’t simply gotten divorced or had children with various men. I established that my husband died suddenly, not long after we’d adopted them.

What was the point in all that? Was I trying to garner sympathy? Was I trying to elicit a little grace over the bad behavior they might have just been witnessing?

Many years into this widow journey, I began to discern the Lord really working on me in how I answered these questions.

Over time, and with mercy only He could offer, He showed me how much of the way I answered was to prevent judgment. Yes, I was afraid of being judged by people.

In the case of explaining the size of our large family — they probably think we should never have had this many kids.

With the work question — they’re quietly accusing me of being lazy.

And with the one asking if the children are mine — I’m guessing they’ve noticed they don’t look like me (the older three are darker-skinned), and that I clearly have trouble keeping them in line at times.

The problem the Lord showed me in how I answered these questions was really just one problem wearing two faces. I made it all about me — managing what people would think, protecting my own image. And in doing that, I was judging the very people asking, assuming the worst of their hearts before they’d said a word.

These days, I mostly just answer the question.

“Yes, they’re mine.” Period. No paragraph of context, no resume of grief offered up to soften anyone’s confusion before they’ve even asked for it.

If someone genuinely wants more — a friend introducing me to someone curious, someone who wants to hear the whole strange, redemptive shape of it — I’ll tell them. Gladly, even. I’ve learned most people are a lot less harsh than the version of them I built in my head. Mostly, they’re just amazed I’m still standing.

But I don’t lead with the explanation anymore. Nobody’s owed the footnotes before they’ve asked for the chapter.

What changed wasn’t the questions. People still ask the same things they always did. What changed is that I stopped answering the fear instead of the question. I’m no longer defending myself against a judgment that, most of the time, was never actually being implied — it was one I was quietly insinuating myself, then arguing against before anyone said a word.

He didn’t have to convince me that people were kinder than I thought. He just had to get me quiet enough to notice.

Yes, these are my children. Yes, I stayed home. Yes, it’s just me.

That’s the whole answer now. Period.

I won’t go into each of those seasons here — maybe I’ll save them for a memoir. However, there’s one I'd like to tell you about now.

When I was fourteen, my mother moved my two siblings and me to another state after her divorce from my dad. She had just endured one of the most painful trials of her life, and the move was her attempt at a new beginning for all of us. New location. New friends. Eventually, a new marriage for her.

I recognized trouble brewing

I’ve always had a keen sense of discernment. Before we moved, I knew it was a bad idea. Most fourteen-year-olds would tell you that leaving everything they know is hard, and I’m sure plenty of that was ordinary teenage grief. But for me, it was more than that. I knew trouble was coming.

No amount of begging changed my mother’s mind. We were going. We were transitioning in the middle of the last quarter of the school year, which meant finishing eighth grade in a new school only to start ninth grade in another one.

We moved anyway.

I was miserable. Forty years later, I can still feel that pain when I allow myself to go back to those days. Somehow, I finished eighth grade, losing a little more of myself each day. I fell into a despair I’d never known. My mother was sure I’d come around — moving is hard for teenagers, she often reminded me, but I’d make friends and grow to love the new house and the new state if I’d just try.

Believe it or not, I did try. I was a firstborn and a rule follower, and a grade-A people-pleaser on top of it. Good student, obedient daughter, loyal friend. I’d been blessed — though it often felt like a curse — with a deep sensitivity to what everyone else was feeling. I didn’t want to keep wounding my mother with my near-defiant attitude over this move.

I had to do something. Something in me had to change.

Discovering truth through an unlikely character

One afternoon that summer, I picked up my Bible looking for a way to fight the anguish inside me.

You’d think someone raised in church her whole life would know exactly where to turn. I didn’t. I could recite the Sunday School stories and the whole catechism of our faith, but I had almost no practice reading the Bible on my own.

Flipping through the pages, I landed on the book of Job and stopped. I read the introduction, kept going, and didn’t stop until I’d finished the whole book that afternoon. Knowing what I know now, it was a strange choice for the first book of the Bible I ever read straight through. But God met me there.

I read it again the next day. And the day after that. I lost count of how many times I read it through that summer — enough that I started to feel like a modern-day Job. (I had no idea then how much truer that would become.)

Those afternoons spent learning about one grim, faithful old man left me wanting more. I branched out into the other books and into watching televangelists on TV. (I know how that sounds. Hear me out — they get a bad rap. God can use anybody.)

One morning, I was deep into a TV preacher’s message. He kept talking about a personal Savior, about making Him the Lord of your life. I’d always been taught that I was saved by grace through faith, sealed by the baptism I received as an infant. But my parents made that decision for me fourteen years earlier. I had never made it for myself.

When the preacher invited us to pray for God to take up residence in us, I got down on my hands and knees on the living room floor and wept. I begged Him not just to take control of my life but to inhabit my heart — because I was so empty I didn’t think I could keep going the way I was.

He did exactly that. The aching prayer of fourteen-year-old me on that hot summer morning changed everything. Circumstantially, nothing shifted right away. Internally, I was a new creature. The old Leah was gone. The new one had come.

The warnings resurfaced

I know now I should have been discipled in those early days, but we hadn’t joined a new church yet, and I didn’t know enough to know I needed it. For the time being, God met me where I was and taught me Himself through His word.

The discernment I mentioned didn’t fade as I grew up. It sharpened. I understand now that it’s one of the gifts of His Spirit at work in me. Other people have noticed it over the years — I’ve been told more than once that I missed my calling as an FBI profiler. I’m not so sure about that. But it played a real part in what happened next, late that summer of 1986.

My maternal grandmother had lived next door to us back in our old state. We were close to her — not just in proximity but in every way that counts.

One day, I felt led to write her a letter asking if I could come live with her. I finished it and got it in the mail fast, before the people-pleaser in me could start worrying about what my mother would think.

About a week later, my mother came into my room with a friend for backup — she wasn’t sure which version of me she’d be dealing with. They confronted me about the letter. My grandmother had called her, wanting to know what was going on that would make me do such a thing. My mother was completely blindsided.

I’ll get to the point. That first conversation did not go well. It was a hard no, and my grandmother hadn’t even agreed to it yet. But within a few days, everything changed. I was going home — not to the house we’d left, but to my hometown, to live with my grandmother. That Labor Day, another of my mother’s friends drove me the eight hours back to the place I loved.

I was free.

There’s far more to this story than fits here, but I won’t leave you hanging. Remember that discernment?

What I didn’t tell you is that my mother remarried while I was still living at home. I never liked the man. His true colors came out after their ceremony, once he’d moved in. I can’t overstate it: he was not a good man.

A few weeks after I left, my mother showed up on my grandmother’s doorstep with my brother and sister. She was leaving him. He’d physically hurt her on top of the verbal abuse I had witnessed first-hand before I moved away.

She didn’t stay long before she was guilted into going back, but she left my siblings with us, at least for a while. Six months later, my brother went home to her. A year after that, my sister followed. I never did. And after they returned, her husband tried to take her life — and my brother was there. He didn’t just witness it. He saved her. Twelve years old, and he stopped the attack.

He was there the whole time

I have no doubt I am who I am today, partly because God gave me the clear knowing that I had to leave when I did. He let me be cared for through my pivotal high school years by a selfless grandmother.

My brother and sister stayed in that place years longer than I did — the same place my discernment had told me to run from. I’ve never fully made peace with that. I got out at fourteen and was handed quiet years with my grandmother; they got the rest of it. I didn’t have the power to take them with me, and for a long time, the unfairness of it sat on me like a stone. There were seasons their road was so much harder than mine that I had no business saying a phrase like “nothing wasted” anywhere near them.

My mother did eventually get out of that marriage, but life stayed hard for her. I don’t judge her for any of it. She was a broken woman, undone by the collapse of her marriage to my dad, desperate to feel loved again.

Years later, talking about that time, I told her I’d forgiven her long ago. And I told her one more thing, hoping to lift some of the guilt she still carried:

“Mom, God didn’t waste the summer of 1986. It’s when I surrendered to Him.”

Tears filled her eyes.

And there’s this: my brother and sister both came to faith, too, years later, in the very place I couldn’t save them from. God was there the whole time.

He wasted none of it.

After seeing their jaw drop a little, I explain. One biological daughter. Four adopted — three from across an ocean, one from foster care right here in our home state. And four more I call my bonus kids, the ones who came with my second marriage, who I count without hesitating because God did the adding, not me. Nine. A family I could never have drawn up on my own if you’d handed me a pencil and a hundred years.

What I usually don’t say to the stranger in the checkout line is that I always wanted a big family — I just pictured more of it coming from me.

I believed Him, and I was in turmoil

Soon after my daughter was born, I knew something. Not the knowing you reason your way into — the kind that settles into your spirit and won’t be talked back out. To borrow a phrase from a dear friend, “I know in my knower,” I would be a mother of many. I had no doubt it came from Him. I only assumed I understood what He meant by it. Mother of many. Surely that meant more pregnancies. A houseful, the usual way, the way I’d planned.

Then the empty months started stacking up. The PCOS diagnosis I received before my first pregnancy had been background noise most of my adult life, but the noise got louder after my one pregnancy and never quieted again. Babies kept arriving — for other people. I went to the showers. I held the tiny outfits up for the circle to admire. I smiled, and I meant it, and then I drove home and sat with the very particular ache of believing a promise you cannot find one shred of evidence for.

That’s the part I want to be honest about, because faith gets sold as the absence of that ache, and it is not. I believed Him. I never once stopped believing Him. And yet I was often in turmoil. I filled proverbial buckets with my tears each time a friend or family member would announce a pregnancy. I firmly held the deep faith I needed to believe Him, while the confusion of not yet seeing the promise remained. Both things. At the same time. I knew exactly what He had said, and I could not for the life of me see how He intended to keep it.

The woman who said, “It is well”

There’s a woman from the town of Shunem in the book of 2 Kings the text never even bothers to name. We first meet her being generous — she builds the prophet Elisha a small room on her roof to stay in — and that, usually, is where we often settle her. Hospitality. A kind lady with a spare bed. I think we shortchange her badly when we stop reading there.

Because she gets a promise too. Elisha tells her she’ll be holding a son within the year, and her first reaction isn’t joy — it’s nearly fear. From the New International Version, “No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!” She knows precisely what a broken promise would cost, because she’s the one who’d have to carry it. I have sat in that exact pew. The not-wanting-to-want, in case it gets snatched back.

As promised, the son comes. And then, years later, the son dies — in her arms, on her lap, around noon, just gone.

Here’s the part I keep circling back to. She carries the boy upstairs, lays him on the prophet’s bed, shuts the door, and saddles a donkey to ride out to find the man of God. Her husband asks why she’s going; it isn’t a holy day, there’s no occasion. And, in the New King James Version, she answers with three powerful words. “It is well.”

She says it with a dead child in the upstairs room. She says it again on the road, when Elisha sends a servant out to ask after the boy — and she gives the same answer. “It is well.” Not because it looked well; by every visible measure, it was the precise opposite of well. She says it because she refuses to let go of the One who made the promise before she has her answer in hand. The text says plainly that her soul was in deep distress — yet she said it anyway. She also rode toward God anyway, and she would not leave Him until He answered.

That is the faith I am reaching for. I’ll be honest, I’m not there yet.

He kept His promise — just not the way I’d have crafted it

Because here is how “mother of many” genuinely came true for me: not through my body, but through a foster placement ultimately leading to a courtroom, a different country across an ocean, and a man who showed up with four children already folded into the count. The promise was kept. It was just kept in a new language I had to learn, on a timeline I’d never have chosen, in a shape I couldn’t have sketched if I tried. Nine children. I only gave birth to one. He never lied to me. And, truthfully, I never lost my faith (at least concerning this promise). I simply couldn’t see the road from where I was standing — an ache in my lap, smiling through somebody else’s baby shower.

I don’t know what you’re holding that hasn’t come true the way you pictured it. It may have nothing to do with children. A healing that hasn’t come. A door that won’t open. A prayer you’ve prayed so long you’ve half-stopped expecting an answer. From the inside, the waiting feels about the same, whatever shape it takes.

What that unnamed Shunammite woman teaches me — what I am slowly, unevenly learning — is that “it is well” is not something you say after the answer finally arrives. Anyone can manage it then. She said it before. Door shut, the absolute worst already true, she rode out to find God still holding a promise she couldn’t yet see Him keep.

In this season of rebuilding after fifty, my natural eyes want to laugh at the promises He’s made me that are still waiting to come true. But when I look back over the first part of my life, I have proof that He is who He says He is — countless promises already kept.

I’m not all the way there. But I’m getting better at believing it early — at saying “it is well” while the room is still dark, some days a good while before I understand it — and that, I’m starting to believe, is the whole assignment. He kept His word to me in a shape I never could have drawn. I have nine children and gave birth to one, and I’m learning to trust that this next dark room is no different: He’s already holding what I can’t yet see.

I sat there and thought: I might be the least qualified person alive for this one.

Here’s the resume I’d be bringing to the subject. A divorce I didn’t see coming. A husband lost to suicide — no warning, nothing that made it make sense. A second husband gone just as suddenly, years later. A childhood that left marks I spent a long time learning to set down. An addiction I had to climb out of with my fingernails. And the present-tense part, the part that isn’t past at all: four kids I’m raising by myself, several of them wired in ways the world wasn’t built for, and a retirement account that now feels more symbolic than secure.

That’s the desk I’m writing hope from. You can see the problem.

How do you write about a sunrise from the bottom of a well?

For a while, I thought the honest thing to do was quit. Who was I to tell anyone it gets better, when “better” in my house is a moving target, and some days I’m not sure I believe it myself? I didn’t want to hand someone a postcard of a peace I couldn’t actually locate. I’ve been on the receiving end of that kind of writing — the tidy, glowing kind, apparently composed by people whose hardest day was a flat tire — and it doesn’t comfort anybody. It isolates. It makes you feel like the one broken thing in a world of people who supposedly figured it out.

So I almost closed the laptop.

And then I got stuck on the word last.

The night I didn’t delete the sentence

Tragedy is loud. It walks into your life, and it talks and talks, and for a long stretch, it really does seem to get the final say in everything. Suicide tried to say something about my worth. Sudden death said something about how safe I was ever allowed to feel again. The bank balance has opinions of its own. For years, those voices got to finish every sentence I started about my own life.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in my recliner, very late in the evening, everyone finally asleep, and I typed one true sentence into this devotional — something small, something I actually believed — and I didn’t delete it. I just looked at it sitting there. And it landed on me slowly that the tragedy hadn’t typed it. I had. The hard things had written a great deal of my story, paragraph after paragraph of it. They had not, as it turned out, written the last line. I was still here. At the table. At midnight. Putting down words they didn’t get to choose.

That was the moment. It wasn’t lightning. Nobody across the room would have noticed a thing — just a tired woman declining to hit the backspace key. But that’s exactly when the tragedy stopped having the last word in my life: the night I understood it was never the one holding the pen at the end.

I think this is what people are grasping at, a little clumsily, when they talk about beauty coming out of ashes. Not that the fire didn’t happen — ashes are the proof it happened. But that the fire doesn’t get to be the final state of the thing. The Old Testament book of Isaiah holds a promise I keep coming back to: ashes can be traded for beauty, and mourning does not get the final word. For years, that verse felt like it was mocking me. Now I read it differently. It’s a promise about who gets the last word over a life. And Someone made it on purpose. It isn’t the fire.

You don’t have to be qualified

If you’re standing in your own wreckage tonight, let me be careful here. I know better than to rush in with a neat little answer for something that has shattered you. I’m not going to tell you it all works out. I don’t know that, and neither does anyone trying to sell it to you in three easy steps.

Here is the only thing I’ve actually got. You do not need a clean story to be useful, and you do not need to feel hopeful before you’re allowed to start writing your way toward hope. The trembling hands count. The draft you weep through counts. The true sentence you type at midnight and refuse to delete — that one counts most of all. You’re allowed to begin before you feel ready, because waiting until you feel qualified is just one more way of handing the pen back to the very thing that’s been writing over you.

So the cursor is still waiting on me to direct its next move. The devotional still isn’t finished. My story is still, by any reasonable measure, a wreck I’m a long way from cleaning up.

But I’m the one at the keyboard now. And the last word was never going to belong to the fire — it belongs to the One who promised me beauty, and to me, deciding to believe Him enough to keep typing.

The kids know the rule: unless someone is bleeding or the house is on fire, the porch is off-limits until I come back in. They honor this about sixty percent of the time, which, in this house, I’ve learned to count as a win.

It is the smallest thing, it seems. It is also, some mornings, the only thing keeping me from running completely dry.

I used to think rest was something I’d get to

For years, I treated my own needs as the last item on a list that never seemed to end. I’d rest once the laundry was caught up. Once the appointments were scheduled, the meltdown was handled, the IEP was fought for, and the kids were finally asleep. Once everything was handled, then I’d refill.

That day never came. It was never going to. There is no version of solo-parenting four kids — several with significant needs, all with their own long list of diagnoses — where everything gets handled and a tidy window of rest opens up as the reward. The work doesn’t end. It just keeps quietly handing you the next thing.

So I had to learn something that did not come naturally to me: that running myself all the way dry isn’t noble. It isn’t even useful. It just makes me worse at the one job I can’t quit.

The empty cup isn’t holy. It’s a liability.

There’s a particular kind of praise that gets handed to mothers who pour themselves out to nothing — I don’t know how she does it, she never stops. For a long time, I wore that like a medal. I thought the emptying was the point.

It isn’t. When my cup is empty, I am not a more devoted parent. I’m a shorter, more brittle, less present one. I snap at things that don’t deserve it. I miss the small, good moments that are the actual reward of all this. The version of me that runs on fumes is no gift to my children — they get the leftovers of a worn-out woman, and they deserve more than my leftovers.

I can’t parent from an empty cup. In simple terms, the math has never once come out any other way.

What filling it actually looks like

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about self-care when you’re the only adult in the house: it looks nothing like the magazine version. It is not a spa day. It is logistics.

It’s the porch in the morning — coffee and a few verses and a door the kids have been told not to open. It’s a locked bathroom and ten minutes nobody else gets a vote in. It’s a walk where I leave my phone on the counter on purpose. It’s saying no to one more thing the calendar wanted from me, and not apologizing for the no.

And every so often, when childcare actually comes together — which, for kids with needs like mine, is no small feat, since you can’t simply hand the evening to whatever teenager lives nearby — it’s a night away. An actual night away from the closing-in walls of my home. A quiet room, a full night’s sleep, a morning where no one needs a single thing from me. Those are rare. I’ve stopped feeling guilty about how badly I need them when they come.

None of it is indulgent. All of it is maintenance — ordinary upkeep on the only vehicle big enough to carry this whole family, the one that simply has to keep running.

Why the porch, specifically

I could rest anywhere. I choose the porch and the open Bible because rest, for me, has never just meant the absence of demand. It means being filled back up by Someone who doesn’t run dry — Someone I keep meeting in those few quiet minutes before the day starts pulling at me.

That’s the part the gift-shop version of self-care misses entirely. I don’t only need to stop pouring. I need to be refilled from a source that isn’t me — because I am not, it turns out, a renewable resource on my own.

If you’re pouring out too

Maybe you’re not parenting alone, or parenting kids like mine. Maybe your cup is emptying into an aging parent, a job that takes far more than it returns, a season of your own rebuilding that’s asking everything you’ve got. The specifics don’t much matter. The math is the same for all of us: you cannot keep giving from a cup you never let anyone refill.

This isn’t permission to set down what you’re carrying. It’s permission to stop believing you’re supposed to carry it on empty.

So tomorrow morning, before the day starts asking anything from you — find your porch. Whatever yours is. Defend the ten (or twenty or thirty) minutes. They are not the reward you get once everything’s finally handled. They’re the thing that lets you handle any of it at all.

The coffee’s still warm. The house is still quiet. For a few more minutes, this one is mine.

But there’s a line in it I’ve never been able to shake, because the woman who wrote it had no business knowing it yet:

Joy doesn’t blanket me without my first choosing it to be my covering.

She was right. She just didn’t know yet how many times she’d have to prove it.

Joy was never the same thing as feeling joyful

Here’s what I stayed confused about for a long time, and what I suspect a lot of us get confused about: I thought joy was a feeling that would arrive once my circumstances earned it. Once the grief lifted. Once the dust settled. Once life finally handed me a stretch of good enough to feel good about.

That version of joy never came, because it doesn’t exist. The kind I was waiting for is just happiness wearing a Sunday dress — pleasant, real, and entirely dependent on things going well.

The joy I actually needed turned out to be something sturdier and far less convenient. It doesn’t wait for the circumstances to cooperate. It’s a choice you make standing in the wreckage, before anything has improved, while you still feel nothing close to it.

I wrote back then that taking a flyover view of my life produced no joy at all — and it didn’t. From up high, all you can see is the scale of what’s gone wrong. But up close, with a microscope, I could find a hundred small things worth being grateful for that the wide shot completely missed. The choice was never about denying the wreckage. It was about deciding which view I was going to live in.

What it actually looks like now

In 2011, I chose joy on an anniversary, with the weight of the date pressing down on me — dramatic, the way grief is dramatic in the early months when everyone’s still watching to see whether you’ll be okay.

Fifteen years on, it looks nothing like that.

Now choosing joy is a thing I do on a Tuesday that means nothing to anybody. It’s deciding to laugh at something one of my kids said instead of bracing for the next hard thing on the list — and the list, I promise you, is long. It’s solo parenting four children with a stack of diagnoses between them and still, somehow, noticing that the light through the kitchen window is doing something worth stopping for.

There’s no audience for that kind of choosing. No anniversary to make it meaningful. Just the quiet, daily decision to look at my actual life through the microscope instead of the flyover, on a day that’s given me no particular reason to.

That, I’ve learned, is where joy actually lives. Not in the big declarations. In the ordinary mornings when nothing has been fixed, and you choose it anyway.

You don’t need a funeral to qualify for this

Maybe you’ve never lost a person. Your hard season might be a marriage that’s quietly coming apart, a diagnosis you’re learning to live alongside, a job that’s hollowing you out, a bank account that gave way under you, a version of your life you fully expected to be living by now that simply never arrived.

The loss doesn’t have to be the kind that comes with a casserole and a card. If you’re standing in the middle of something hard and waiting to feel better before you’ll let yourself feel anything good — this is for you too. You don’t have to wait.

The choice is available to you long before the feeling is.

Why I can choose it at all

I want to be honest about the ground I’m standing on, because pretending otherwise has never once helped me rebuild a single thing.

I can choose joy in the wreckage because I don’t believe the wreckage gets the last word. The younger version of me wrote about that with a lot of exclamation points and a lot of certainty. I’d write it more quietly now, but I’d write the same thing: that I am held by Someone who has not once let go, even in the seasons I was sure He had. The joy isn’t something I manufacture. It’s something I turn toward — a steadiness that was already there, waiting for me to choose to look at it.

I still don’t feel it most mornings before I choose it. That hasn’t changed in fifteen years, and I’ve stopped expecting it to. The feeling isn’t the point. The choosing is.

So I’ll say again what that grieving woman wrote in 2011, two months out from the worst thing she’d ever survived, not knowing the half of what was still coming:

I choose joy.

Today, on an ordinary day that’s done nothing to earn it — I still do.

I went away for a few days. Rest was the whole idea. A quieter view, a slower morning, someone else’s kitchen. And it was good — I want to say that plainly before I say anything else, because for a long stretch of my life, good was not a word I could reach for honestly, and I don’t take it for granted now.

But here’s the thing nobody puts on the postcard: vacation ends, and you come home to the exact life you left.

The inbox didn’t pause out of respect. The fridge emptied itself of nearly everything except condiments, a few leftovers we didn’t get to before this recent mini-vacation, and one now-spoiled half-gallon of milk. The kids’ schedules kept right on existing, indifferent to the fact that I was briefly a person with no obligations more pressing than deciding when to eat. The version of me who rested got met at the front door by the version of me who has four children still under my roof, a long list of diagnoses to manage, and a house that does not run itself.

I stood in the entryway yesterday and felt the two of them shake hands.

You can leave for a few days. You can’t leave your life.

I think I used to believe, somewhere underneath the part of me that knew better, that if I could just get away far enough, the weight would stay behind. That distance was the cure. Put enough miles between yourself and the hard thing, and surely it loosens its grip.

Sadly, it doesn’t. I’ve tested this theory more thoroughly than I’d like to admit. You can change the scenery, but the things that are heavy are heavy because they live inside the load-bearing walls of your actual life, and those walls come home with you. Grief does. Responsibility does. The slow, unfinished work of rebuilding does. A trip is a lovely thing, yet it is not a relocation away from your own circumstances.

And honestly? For a few years there, I think I wanted escape more than I wanted rest. They feel like the same thing from a distance. They are not. Escape is running from. Rest is being held in the middle of. One requires the problem to disappear. The other doesn’t.

That distinction took me an embarrassingly long time to learn, and I still forget it roughly every time I pack a bag.

The second kind of return.

Maybe you’ve never had to come back from a trip to a household like mine. Maybe your re-entry looks completely different — a job you dread, a diagnosis you’re still learning to live alongside, a marriage you’re rebuilding, a quiet house that’s too quiet now, a stack of bills that doesn’t care that you needed a break. The specifics aren’t the point. The shape is.

Because almost all of us know the strange grief of coming back. Of leaving something behind for a little while, getting a taste of lighter, and then walking right back into the thing that was waiting. The let-down isn’t a sign you did rest wrong. It’s just what it feels like to be a person with a real life, returning to it.

If that’s you this week — if you came home to something you’d half-hoped would have sorted itself out while you were gone — you’re in good company. Mine, for one.

What I’m actually unpacking.

So here’s where I’ve landed, standing over a suitcase I still haven’t dealt with.

I don’t think I’m meant to drive somewhere to find peace and then mourn it on the way home. I think the rest I actually need is the kind that travels — the kind that’s available in the unpacked suitcase and the half-done list and the very ordinary morning I woke up to today. Not the absence of the load. Something steady underneath it.

I keep coming back to the idea that His presence didn’t stay at the vacation house. He met me at my own front door, in the entryway, between the woman who rested and the woman who has to get back to work. He’s here in the pile. He was always more interested in being with me in the middle of my life than in waiting for me at the edge of someone else’s.

The suitcase still has to be unpacked. The inbox still has to be answered. The rotten milk and old leftovers, I think, have to be thrown away. None of that changed overnight, and I've finally stopped expecting it to.

But I came home rested in a way I can’t drive to and can’t lose. And that — the kind of peace that doesn’t need my circumstances to cooperate before it shows up — is the only kind worth carrying through the door.

The suitcase can wait one more hour. What I needed, I already brought home.

The first year after Joel died, my kitchen counter looked like a potluck. Casseroles in dishes I’d have to remember to return. An influx of cards in the mailbox. People I barely knew were messaging me on social media, telling me they were praying. The phone rang. The doorbell rang. For a whole year, the world circled close, like it knew I couldn’t stand up on my own yet.

What no one told me is that year one isn’t the hard part.

Year one, you’re numb. Shock is a kind of mercy — it wraps you in cotton and walks you through the funeral and the paperwork and the first round of holidays before you’ve fully understood what happened. You’re running on something that isn’t quite strength, but it holds you up. And everyone’s watching, so you hold steady.

Then year two arrives, and the cotton wears off.

By the second year, the casseroles had long stopped. The cards trickled to nothing. The world had quietly decided I was doing better — and the cruel joke of it was that I felt worse than I had at the funeral. The numbness had burned off and left me standing in the full heat of it, finally understanding, in my body and not just my head, that he was not coming back. Not next week. Not ever.

And by then, nobody was asking about us anymore. “How are you?” had gone back to meaning the polite version. To say “Actually, I’m drowning…” in month eighteen felt like breaking a rule no one had written down, but everyone seemed to know that unwritten rule — the one that says grief has a shelf life, and yours expired a while ago.

So, I most often responded with something along the lines of “I’m fine” and proceeded to drive the kids to their appointments. Later, I came apart quietly in places where no one could see.

That was the year I learned grief doesn’t run on anyone’s calendar but its own. The kids needed me no less just because the world had moved on. Our four adopted children were still at home, as they were significantly younger (ages 2, 6, 7, and 8) than any of our biological children. The four of them had a list of diagnoses as long as my arm, and I was the only grown-up left to meet their growing needs. I couldn’t fall apart on a schedule. I fell apart in pieces — in the laundry room, in the ten quiet minutes after the last one finally went to sleep — and then I put myself back together enough to do it again the next day.

Here’s the part I hold onto.

When the people couldn’t stay — and that’s not a complaint, people have their own lives and their own limits — God did. The casseroles stopped. His presence didn’t. On the worst nights of that second year, when the house was dark, and the loneliness sat on my chest like something with weight, the one thing that refused to pack up and go home was the sense that I was not alone in it. Not rescued out of it. Just not alone in it. That turned out to be the thing I actually needed.

I’m writing this for whoever’s in their own year two right now. Maybe it isn’t a death — maybe it’s a divorce, a diagnosis, a marriage that ended, a life that quietly fell apart while everyone assumed you’d bounced back. If the hardest part came after everyone stopped checking on you, I want you to hear this plainly:

You are not doing it wrong. You are not weak, or stuck, or behind. Grief is just honest, and it tells the truth on its own timeline — long after the cards stop coming.

The casseroles will stop. Let them. Someone steadier is holding you up, and He doesn’t have a shelf life.

There’s still a spark here, even in year two. Maybe especially in year two.

I remember standing at the kitchen counter on an ordinary weeknight — four kids’ worth of dinner to figure out, a sink already full, and the particular silence of a house where the other adult is just gone. Not at work. Not coming home late. Gone. Joel had been alive a few weeks before, and now I was the only grown-up in a new home we had recently bought together, parenting four children we had chosen to adopt together, and he wasn’t going to walk through the door to help me carry any of it.

I want to tell you I felt faith rise up strong in that moment. I didn’t. I mostly felt the weight of the dinner hour followed by the bedtime routine, and how completely it was now mine to carry alone. Every single night.

That’s the part I think about when I picture someone asking why I didn’t name this something more hopeful.

Here’s what I’ve learned about ashes since then.

When a fire moves through a forest, it doesn’t only destroy. It clears — the choking underbrush, the dead things crowding out the light, all of it gone. And in the bed of ash left behind, something happens that can’t happen anywhere else. There are species of pines whose cones stay sealed shut for years, waiting; it takes the heat of a fire to open them and let the seed fall. There are seeds that will not wake until flame or smoke breaks them open. They were designed for after. They cannot begin any other way.

I am not going to tell you the fire was a gift. It wasn’t. I would give almost anything to have my old life back. But I can tell you that some things have grown in the cleared ground of my life that I don’t believe could have grown in any other soil — a deeper faith, a harder and truer kind of hope, a family I love in a shape I never would have chosen.

That’s why I didn’t name this something tidier. “Beauty” would have skipped the burning. “Hope” alone would have rushed past the ash. I wanted a name that tells the truth about both — that something was lost here, really lost, and that something is growing here too. Not instead of the ashes. In them.

I’m writing this from the same kitchen.

The sink is full again. The kids are older now — taller, louder, harder in some ways and easier in others. I’m still the only grown-up here, still solo parenting a houseful, still handing God the things I can’t carry, which is most of them. I haven’t arrived anywhere.

I’m not writing to you from the far side of all this, cleaned up and resolved.

I’m writing from the cleared ground. From the part where the burning is done and the building has started, slow and unglamorous and real.

That’s what this place is. I’ll write honestly about the losses — the deaths, the broken marriage, the dysfunctional childhood, the constant financial lack, the mistakes I made that I’m still paying for. And I’ll write just as honestly about what’s growing, because both things are true at once, and I’ve stopped pretending otherwise. I write from my Christian faith because it’s central to all that I am.

But if you’ve had to rebuild anything — a faith, a family, a life you didn’t plan for — you belong here too.

Pull up a chair. There’s room in the ashes.

Maybe life didn’t turn out the way you planned. Maybe grief found you unexpectedly. Maybe you’re rebuilding after loss, heartbreak, failure, trauma, disappointment, or simply a season that left you wondering who you even are anymore.

That’s why this space is here. It is my deepest desire to encourage you through my posts and community engagement — along with the aid of practical resources — all in an effort to help you find hope again, as I have personally done.

When it comes to being thrust into a season of confusion and despair, I understand that place more than I ever wanted to.

Over the years, my life has been marked by devastating loss, unexpected detours, hard decisions, financial struggle, solo parenting, adoption, special needs parenting, recovering from my own mistakes and choices, and learning how to keep going when everything familiar seemed to fall apart. There were seasons when survival itself felt like the victory. I’ve buried two husbands and learned to parent four adopted children through grief and secondary trauma — none of it on a timeline I would have chosen.

And yet… here I am.

Not untouched by the fire. Not pretending the ashes didn’t exist. But slowly discovering that God still creates beauty from broken places.

That’s what After the Ashes is about.

This isn’t a space for polished perfection or shallow positivity. It’s a space for honest conversations about grief, faith, resilience, rebuilding, healing, and finding hope again — especially when life looks nothing like you expected.

Some days we’ll talk about loss. Some days about courage. Some days about practical rebuilding after life implodes. Some days about faith, when answers don’t come easily. Some days about the messes we made ourselves, and the grace that meets us there.

And sometimes, we’ll simply remind each other that starting over does not mean your story is over.

If you’re in a rebuilding season too, I hope you’ll stay.

There is still life after loss. There is still purpose after heartbreak. There is still hope after the ashes.

Welcome. I’m grateful you’re here.

— Leah

Get my guide here!