The day my 14-year-old daughter couldn’t get out of bed on her own was the first time I really felt the heaviness of life. It was then we knew we were facing a major health issue. At times, especially before Grace’s diagnosis, the weight of her illness felt unbearable.
From the time I was a little girl, I’ve always loved gymnastics. I grew up in the 1980s, when gymnast Mary Lou Retton was taking the world, or at least the United States, by storm. She won a gold, two silver, and two bronze medals at the 1984 Summer Olympics…
I’ve always loved the start of a new school year. Freshly sharpened pencils and clean, untouched notebooks bring me a lot of joy. Each school year brings exciting opportunities, thrilling books to read, and, for our home-schooling family, quality time with my girls. But this year is bittersweet. Our daughter…
Last week, many of us here in Florida had to prepare for Hurricane Idalia. Emergency notifications warned of imminent inclement weather. By midweek, our grocery stores were bare and the line to fill our gas tanks wrapped around the station. Schools closed. The hurricane threat moved me to action.
Summer at our house usually overflows with days at the pool, cookouts with crunchy corn on the cob, and long, lazy vacations. But when our youngest daughter, Bethany, lost one of her close friends to a tragic accident at the end of June, that all changed. After the…
The other week, we were once again at Wolfson Children’s Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, for my daughter Grace’s Rituxan (rituximab) infusion. For the past two years, Grace, 18, has received infusions every six months to help alleviate symptoms of Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS). It’s taken some time…
I have lived in many countries and cultures, thanks to my husband’s service in the U.S. military. One of the first things we did upon arriving in a new place was learn how to assimilate. The military gave us opportunities and tools to learn the local language and pointed out…
She burned with fever the day we held her for the first time. Her little lungs struggled to breathe between coughing fits. Our daughter Grace was just 13 months old when we traveled across the world to bring her home. When we got her to the hotel, we stripped her…
Last December, our family spent a few days in Atlanta working with the humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse on its project Operation Christmas Child. It was a trip I wasn’t sure our daughter Grace could make. She’d been diagnosed with Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) three years earlier,…
A plaque hanging in our dining room lists all the places our little family has called home. Those include Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Norfolk, Virginia; La Maddalena, Italy; and Sembawang, Singapore, among others. Throughout my adult life, I embraced a common phrase floating around the U.S. Navy: “Home is where…
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