Finding Forty

Our youngest son recently had a procedure at Arkansas Children’s Hospital.

My husband grabbed us lunch while we were there, and we sat down to eat near another young couple with a baby even smaller than ours.

And for reasons that made absolutely no sense in the present moment, I felt guilty.

I wondered if they had eaten.

I wondered if we were eating in front of people who couldn’t afford to.

I actually thought, If we weren’t so pressed for time, I would offer to buy their lunch.

Then another thought hit me:

Where in the world is this coming from?

I didn’t know these people.

I didn’t know their financial situation. I didn’t know whether they’d already eaten, had food waiting for them, or could have bought the entire cafeteria if they’d wanted to.

They had done absolutely nothing to make me think they needed anything from me.

This wasn’t about them.

It was about me.

Suddenly I remembered being a child when my sister was dealing with heart problems.

I remembered adults around me noticing what other people had that we didn’t. I remembered hearing about people with privilege. People eating around others who didn’t have food. How rude that was.

Rich snobs.

I hadn’t thought about those conversations in years.

But apparently some part of me remembered.

Because there I was, decades later, sitting in a children’s hospital eating lunch with my husband, and something inside me was deeply uncomfortable with being the person who had the lunch.

Maybe even with looking like the person who had the lunch.

And that’s the part that has stayed with me.

Because I’m not particularly concerned with brands or appearances. My Birkenstocks were bought on clearance. Our admittedly bougie stroller was bought secondhand.

But even typing that makes me stop.

Why do I feel the need to explain that?

Why do I need you to know I didn’t pay full price for my shoes?

Why do I need you to know the stroller was used?

Why does some part of me still want to provide receipts proving that I haven’t become one of those people?

There it is.

This was never about lunch.

It wasn’t really about the couple beside us, either.

It was about an old understanding of wealth, privilege, goodness and deservingness that I apparently tucked away somewhere a long time ago.

Somewhere along the way, compassion got tangled up with guilt.

Having enough became suspicious.

Being comfortable when someone else might not be became something that required an apology.

And apparently, even now, part of me believes I need to explain why I’m allowed to have what I have.

That’s uncomfortable to admit.

Because I don’t want to lose the part of me that notices other people.

I don’t want comfort to make me oblivious.

If someone beside me is hungry and I can feed them, I hope I always want to.

But I don’t think compassion is supposed to require shame.

I don’t have to prove that my shoes were clearance.

I don’t have to explain where I bought the stroller.

And I don’t have to feel guilty for eating lunch.

Maybe I can keep the tenderness that came from those years without carrying all the shame that came with it.

I’m beginning to think those are two very different things.

Going deep today, but I feel led to share, so here goes.

In October 2022, we lost a pregnancy.

And I’m embarrassed to admit what came next.

I sighed a breath of relief.

Even typing that feels ugly.

We were in the thick of fostering. At that point, the goal of the case was adoption. We loved those boys. We had spent years praying for children, and suddenly we were staring at a future where we might become a family in a way we hadn’t expected.

And then I was pregnant.

It was too much to hold at once.

How many children would we have? What would adoption look like? What would another baby mean? Could we do all of it?

I was overwhelmed.

So when that pregnancy ended, there was grief.

But there was relief too.

And I didn’t really let myself grieve because how do you grieve something you’re also relieved happened?

Still, that pregnancy gave me something before it left.

Hope.

For the first time in a long time, I knew pregnancy wasn’t completely implausible for us.

There were options.

There was hope for our family no matter which direction the foster care story went.

I didn’t name that baby.

Honestly, I barely gave myself permission to acknowledge that there had been a baby to name.

And now, almost four years later, I think I grieve that baby more than I did then.

Not long after that loss, everything changed again.

The goal for our foster boys moved from adoption to reunification.

And I praised God.

Their mom was turning it around.

They longed for her.

There was something incredibly beautiful about watching the way those children loved their mother. Completely. Unconditionally.

I had started foster care reunification-minded. Ultimately, that was what I wanted for them too.

But two years is a long time to live with your own future on hold.

We loved them.

We wanted what was best for them.

And our own family planning was pressing.

Those things were all true at the same time.

Then, in early 2023, I got pregnant again.

Liam.

Except he wasn’t Liam yet.

He was Franklin.

Because after losing pregnancies, I knew how easily babies disappeared.

And I was terrified.

My number one goal during that pregnancy was to give my baby a name.

The October baby didn’t have one. When little moments of grief would unexpectedly find me, that bothered me more than I expected.

There wasn’t even a name.

So this baby would have one.

I rubbed my belly and called him Franklin.

But I chose Franklin very intentionally.

It was a name I knew I probably wouldn’t actually use if we brought him home.

That’s hard to admit too.

I wanted my baby to have a name.

I just wasn’t brave enough yet to give him his name.

I went to Peek-a-Boo every month.

Sometimes more.

I needed to see him.

Then eventually I could feel him, and every kick gave me a moment of relief.

He’s still here.

He’s still here.

He’s still here.

I lived from reassurance to reassurance.

And somewhere far into the depths of that pregnancy, I finally let Franklin become Liam.

I wish I could say I enjoyed that pregnancy.

But the truth is, I was too afraid to deeply love that baby.

Not because I didn’t love him.

Because I loved him so much that I was terrified of what would happen to me if I let myself fully feel it and then lost him too.

I thought maybe keeping one little piece of my heart guarded would make losing him survivable.

Then Liam came home.

And eventually there was another positive pregnancy test.

Too soon.

My body wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready.

And there was that feeling again.

Here we go again.

Then we lost that pregnancy too.

And once again…

relief.

There it is.

That word I wish wasn’t part of my story.

But it is.

Relief and loss.

Gratitude and grief.

Wanting a baby and knowing the timing wasn’t right.

I’ve spent a lot of years believing those feelings weren’t supposed to exist together.

But they did.

And then came Elias.

By the time I carried him, something in me had changed.

I had learned that guarding my heart hadn’t actually protected it.

Loving Liam cautiously wouldn’t have made losing him hurt less.

Fear hadn’t protected me.

It had only taken pieces of the experience from me while he was safely there.

And I didn’t want to do that again.

So my prayer for Elias was different.

I remember it so clearly.

No matter how long he lives inside of me, I’m going to love him.

Deeply love him.

That was it.

Not, God, promise me I get to keep him.

Because I knew by then that there are no guarantees like that.

I just wanted to love him for every single day I was given.

If I got weeks, I wanted him loved for weeks.

If I got months, I wanted him loved for months.

And if somehow I was blessed enough to get a lifetime…

I’d love him for that too.

I still worried.

I still checked.

I still held my breath.

Choosing love didn’t magically make me fearless.

It just meant I wasn’t going to let fear decide how much of my heart my baby was allowed to have.

And now here I am.

Both of my boys are here.

And strangely, it’s now that some of the grief finds me.

Grief for babies I didn’t name.

Grief mixed with guilt because sometimes loss brought relief.

Grief for the pregnancy with Liam that I spent waiting for something terrible to happen instead of allowing myself to believe he might really be mine.

And overwhelming gratitude for the babies I eventually got to bring home.

Maybe grief doesn’t always come when the loss happens.

Sometimes you’re surviving.

Sometimes life is too complicated.

Sometimes there are foster children who need dinner and baths and bedtime.

Sometimes there’s another pregnancy.

Sometimes you’re just trying to make it to the next ultrasound.

And maybe grief waits.

Until you’re ready.

Until life gets quiet enough.

Until years later you’re looking at the children you were eventually blessed to hold and suddenly wondering about the ones you didn’t.

I don’t fully know why this is on my heart so heavily right now.

But I feel led to stop pretending the complicated parts aren’t part of my testimony too.

I have been relieved by pregnancies ending.

I have felt guilty for that relief.

I have been so afraid of losing a baby that I was afraid to completely surrender myself to loving him.

And I have prayed over another baby:

No matter how long I get you, I will love you.

None of those truths erase the others.

Maybe that’s what I’m finally learning.

Grief isn’t proof that I wasn’t grateful.

Relief isn’t proof that I didn’t love.

Fear isn’t proof that my faith wasn’t strong enough.

Sometimes they simply existed together.

And maybe the babies I never named deserve this much from me now:

To acknowledge that they were here.

That they changed me.

That their very short lives became part of the mother I eventually became.

And that even if it took me years to understand it—

they were loved too.

I told myself this summer would be different.

Slower.
Softer.
More rest.
More healing.

I said the words with the sincerity of someone who genuinely believes she can out-negotiate exhaustion.

Apparently, my body had notes.

Yesterday, while doing one of the thousand ordinary things mothers do without ceremony—lifting a child, carrying the weight of someone who trusts you completely—I felt something snap.

Not a dramatic movie moment. No soundtrack. No slow motion.

Just a sudden, brutal message.

Down.

Within hours I could barely function. Getting out of the car felt impossible. Every movement became a negotiation. My body, which I have asked to push through far too much for far too long, stopped negotiating.

It issued terms.

You said we’d rest this summer?

Fine.

We are going down.
Like it or not.

There is a particular irony in being forcibly still when your nervous system is wired to scan for what needs fixing.

The laundry.
The dishes.
The sticky floor.
The appointments.
The bottles.
The endless invisible labor of mothering and managing and remembering.

Even while hurting, my first instinct was not compassion.

It was calculation.

How quickly can I recover?
What can I still get done?
How much can I ignore before guilt catches me?

And maybe that’s the deeper injury.

Not the SI joint.
Not the inflamed muscles.
Not the angry pelvis still carrying the echoes of birth.

Maybe the deeper wound is how difficult it feels to simply stop.

To rest without earning it.
To be cared for without apologizing.
To leave things undone without mentally carrying them anyway.

This body has carried pregnancies, trauma, surgeries, babies, grief, anxiety, hypervigilance, and the quiet burden of competence.

She has whispered for months.

Slow down.
Something isn’t right.
Please listen.

I heard her.

I just kept moving.

So she stopped asking nicely.

And maybe that is the lesson.

Sometimes healing doesn’t arrive as a spa day, a retreat, or a beautifully curated morning routine.

Sometimes healing arrives like a collapse.

Sometimes rest is not chosen.

It is enforced.

And perhaps mercy sometimes looks rude.

Perhaps grace sometimes sounds like:

Sit down.
Lie down.
Stop carrying everything.

I’m walking smoother today.

Not normal.
Not healed.
Just… less guarded.

Progress, I suppose.

The house is still a wreck.

The laundry still waits.

The world, annoyingly, continues turning.

And maybe that is its own medicine.

Everything does not fall apart when I stop.

So today, I’m practicing something unnatural.

I’m letting the house be messy.
I’m letting recovery be unproductive.
I’m letting rest count as work.

My body made herself clear.

I’m trying to finally listen.

We all sleep in one room right now. 🤍

Toddler got upgraded to a toddler bed.
Baby got upgraded from the mini crib to a full crib.

Is it traditional? Nope.

But neither is sprinting through the house half asleep while tiny people roam the halls at 2am.

Families have slept communally for most of human history. Modern American “every child alone in a themed room” culture is actually the newer thing. Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to force what looked right and started paying attention to what actually worked for our family.

And honestly? This setup reduces dysregulation, wandering, nighttime overwhelm, and probably everyone’s cortisol levels too. 😂

This season of parenting may not photograph like a magazine spread, but everyone is safe. Everyone is close. Everyone sleeps better.

And after enough survival-mode nights, that starts to feel a whole lot like success. 🤍

I am raising children
and meeting every version of myself along the way

some days feel like growth
some days feel like barely holding it together in soft lighting

my life is loud
full of small hands, scattered toys, and needs that come before my own

I am the one who remembers
the one who anticipates
the one who keeps it all moving, even when I feel still

there’s a weight to that
a quiet, invisible kind of carrying

I believe in breaking cycles
but no one tells you how heavy the breaking feels while you’re doing it

I am tired in a way that doesn’t ask for attention
just space
just a moment

and still—
I show up
I love deeply
I choose this life again and again

somewhere between the mess and the meaning
between unraveling and becoming

I am still here
still trying
still finding forty 🤍

Chosen in a life that began unchosen.

I remember the moment like it branded itself into me.

I was a preteen, standing in the middle of an argument with my birth mom. Words were flying—sharp, careless, heated. And then she said it.

“I would have had an abortion… but I didn’t have the money.”

About me.

My life.

Time didn’t just slow—it split.

At that age, I was firm in what I believed. Pro-life, no exceptions. So in my mind, it wasn’t just rejection—it was something deeper. It felt like I was hearing, You were almost erased… and not even worth the cost.

I fired back quickly, loudly—

“Then you should have given me up for adoption… or left me in foster care!”

Bold. Confident. Sharp.

But inside?

A little girl collapsed.

Because what I was really saying was,

My feelings are real. My momma doesn’t want me… and never has.

Maybe it was said in anger.

Maybe it was just a moment.

But repair never came.

And years have a way of telling the truth

that apologies never did.

We are estranged now.

And for my peace—I’ve made room for that.

But the truth is…

you don’t just walk away from something like that untouched.

I have walked this life as an unchosen child.

For nearly forty years.

And then—

God did something I never saw coming.

He rewrote the narrative without erasing the past.

He chose me.

Not in a loud, performative way.

Not in a way that demanded perfection.

Because God already knew.

He knew I would get overstimulated, overwhelmed,

and lose my patience sometimes.

He knew I would make mistakes

and doubt myself.

He knew I would worry—

feel stretched thin trying to hold it all together

and figure it all out.

And still…

He said,

I choose her.

He intentionally entrusted me

to be their mom.

Through a husband who chose me—

through the messy, stretching, unraveling seasons of

postpartum,

perimenopause,

ADHD overstimulation,

and the raw weight of motherhood.

Through two little boys

who don’t question if I belong to them.

Who reach for me

like it was always meant to be this way.

And maybe… just maybe…

this is what healing looks like.

Not pretending you were always chosen.

Not rewriting the story to make it prettier.

But standing in the middle of both truths:

I was unchosen…

and still, I am chosen.

Chosen to be loved.

Chosen to be held.

Chosen to mother.

Chosen to break what tried to break me.

Chosen by God

in a way no human could undo.

And for the first time in my life—

I’m not chasing belonging.

I’m learning to rest

in the quiet truth of it.

That even in a life that began unchosen—

I was still, somehow,

always held.

Always seen.

Always chosen.

I saw a cigarette butt on the ground today. As I do many times in public….

Not just saw it—
locked onto it. As I do everytime.

The filter still clean.
The paper barely burned down.
A “good one.”

And before I could even think, my brain did what it was trained to do:

That’s going to waste.

⸻

It’s strange, the things your body remembers before your mind has a chance to catch up.

Because this isn’t about cigarettes.
It never was.

It’s about being taught—quietly, indirectly—that nothing could be wasted.
That value lived in what other people threw away.
That there were ways to make something out of almost nothing… if you just paid attention.

So we walked.

And I scanned the ground.

Not as a game.
Not as a quirky childhood memory.
But as something that felt… important.

Useful.

Like I was helping.

⸻

No one explained the full picture to me then.

No one said, “We’re doing this because addiction is expensive.”
No one said, “You’re being pulled into something you don’t have the language to understand.”

They just taught me what to look for.

And I learned.

Because that’s what children do—
they adapt to the world they’re given,
and they get very, very good at it.

⸻

What I didn’t know is that learning doesn’t stay contained to the moment.

It seeps.

It becomes instinct.

It lives in your eyes—
the way they scan without asking permission.

It lives in your thoughts—
the split-second calculations about usefulness, value, waste.

It lives in your nervous system—
the quiet sense that you should always be looking, always noticing, always making sure nothing is slipping through the cracks.

⸻

So now, years later, I can be standing in a completely different life—
a safe one, a stable one, a life I built on purpose—

and still feel that old wiring flicker on.

That’s usable.
That shouldn’t be wasted.

And almost immediately, another voice answers back:

We don’t need that anymore.

⸻

That moment—right there in between those two thoughts—
that’s where healing lives.

Not in pretending the first thought doesn’t happen.

But in recognizing it for what it is:

a learned response from a version of me who was doing the best she could in an environment that asked her to grow up too fast.

⸻

There’s grief in that.

Grief for the child who didn’t get to just walk.
Who didn’t get to look at the world without scanning it for survival.

Grief for the normalization of things that should have never been normal.

Because let’s say it plainly:

Children are not supposed to be taught to search for cigarette butts.

They’re supposed to be looking at bugs on the sidewalk.
Cracks in the pavement.
Cloud shapes.
Anything but this.

⸻

And yet—

there’s also something else here.

Something complicated.

Because that child learned to notice.

She learned to read a room.
To find value where others didn’t.
To stay alert.
To contribute in the only ways she knew how.

Those skills didn’t disappear.

They just had to be… reclaimed.

Refined.

Redirected.

⸻

Now, I still notice things other people don’t.

But instead of scanning for survival,
I notice my children’s faces.

The way they reach for me without hesitation.
The way they trust that their needs will be met without them having to search the ground for it.

And that difference—
that quiet, almost invisible shift—

is the kind of generational change you can’t always photograph.

But you can feel it.

⸻

I didn’t pick up the cigarette.

I didn’t need to.

I just stood there for a second, noticing the thought,
and then letting it pass.

And maybe that doesn’t sound like much.

But when you come from a place where your instincts were built around survival—

choosing not to act on them
is a kind of freedom that’s hard to explain.

⸻

My children will walk beside me, not because they’re looking for something we need—

but because they just want to be close.

And that alone tells me everything has changed.

As spring break began, we went against every instinct I have as a mother.

We let my child be exposed to peanuts.

On purpose.

In a clinic.

With a team watching closely.

This is part of a clinical study designed to better understand and treat peanut allergies in a controlled setting.

I understood the why.

I trusted the process.

But it still felt like I was walking him toward the very thing I’ve spent his whole life protecting him from.

For his entire life, I’ve read labels like they were contracts.

Double-checked everything.

Carried the quiet awareness that something so small could cause something so big.

Avoidance became love in action.

So what do you do when love asks you to do the opposite?

You show up anyway.

You sit beside your child.

And you try to make something heavy feel light.

At one point, they wrapped him in a burrito to draw blood.

A sheet pulled snug around him—his little body the “tortilla.”

I joked, trying to keep it light.

Don’t be a chicken burrito—be a tough beef burrito.

Then I reframed it—because words matter.

A brave burrito.

And I told him gently

that even brave burritos cry when something hurts.

He trusted me.

In a place that didn’t feel natural.

In a process he didn’t understand.

And then, quietly, his body responded.

Not dramatically.

Not urgently.

Just subtle.

Easy to question. Easy to second guess.

And maybe that’s part of what led us here.

Part of why we chose to do this study was to better understand what a reaction actually looks like in a controlled setting.

Not just for answers—but for validation.

He had the equivalent of one peanut.

We’re told thresholds can vary from day to day.

What is tolerated once may not be tolerated the next.

He made it to about half a peanut before his body responded.

And on a different day, under different circumstances,

even a trace amount—something as small as cross-contamination—could cause a reaction.

Because from the beginning, his symptoms have often been brushed off.

Without wheezing, it was easy for others to question it.

At one point, a paramedic reassured me it was most likely viral.

And maybe that’s part of this story too—

learning to trust what I was seeing,

even when it wasn’t obvious to everyone else.

Because here’s what no one tells you—what this experience taught us:

Allergic reactions don’t always look dramatic.

Sometimes they whisper.

And the hardest part isn’t always the reaction.

It’s the decision.

The moment where you have to choose—

in real time—

whether to trust what you’re seeing

or talk yourself out of it.

What surprised me most wasn’t what happened.

It was what didn’t.

No chaos.

No overwhelming panic.

Just something small

that mattered anyway.

A well-managed allergic reaction can look incredibly calm.

Because as a mom, you think:

If it’s serious, I’ll know.

But sometimes it’s:

If I’m paying attention, I’ll catch it before it becomes serious.

And maybe that’s the shift.

Not waiting for it to look dramatic.

Not waiting for certainty.

But learning to trust the quiet knowing.

I paid attention.

I trusted my instincts.

I didn’t cause this.

I didn’t fail him.

I showed up in a space that felt completely backwards

and still did the most instinctual thing of all:

I paid attention.

We don’t know exactly what the next step will look like.

But we rest in what we do know.

We’ll go back next week and do it again.

Another day. Another round—peanut or placebo.

And that afternoon, we’ll place our first patch, not knowing if it holds peanut or not.

Completely blind.

Still moving forward.

As superhero fans, we always joke that superheroes avoid research centers…

But research isn’t the part of the story anyone celebrates.

It isn’t glamorous.

It isn’t fun.

And in the moment, it doesn’t feel redeeming.

And still, my boy is a superhero.

Fighting quiet battles no one else can see.

Changing the world—one test, one procedure, and soon, one patch at a time.

Because sometimes the real bravery isn’t avoiding the danger—

it’s walking into it together, hope in one hand and fear in the other.

Sometimes instincts are as subtle as the signs before us—

a quiet reminder to pay attention, even to the ones that don’t feel urgent.