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…
“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life.” — C.S. Lewis C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors. His “The Chronicles of Narnia” series captured my undivided attention as a young child. I devoured it, rereading its novel…
When our daughter Grace was facing a rare disease diagnosis three years ago, we had no idea how significantly Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) would affect her life. But we knew things had already been changing for her. Grace could no longer participate in hobbies and other leisure activities…
One of my first goals as a parent of toddlers was to teach them to swim, especially as our family lived in mostly warm-weather climates while moving every few years with the U.S. Navy. Much of our family time was spent at the neighborhood pool. Children’s birthday parties all took…
When our daughter was diagnosed with Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) at age 15, our world shifted overnight. Suddenly, every decision we made had to be filtered through Grace’s additional needs. We moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to be closer to her neurologist. With her condition in mind, we picked…
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