Just this past weekend, we, as a collective body of Christ, commemorated Good Friday and celebrated Resurrection Sunday. We reflected back on the suffering and victory of Jesus from the cross to the grave. We raised our hands in praise over the footprints that exited the tomb!

​Also, this weekend, masses of people walked through their own suffering. From suicide bombers to menacing tornadoes to hopeless diagnoses, many…many people suffered. And, no doubt, many cried out to God for freedom, for safety, for healing.

​I have spent over a year contemplating, planning, organizing, researching and writing a book. It’s very personal and I’m still a few months out of completion, but I’m learning a lot.
I’m learning about this writing and blogging industry, but I’m also learning about myself, my history, and my God.

You see, this book is about my family. It’s about my oldest sister, it’s about my mom, it’s about my dad, and it’s about some of the tough stuff. It’s about the ugly of life that, for so long, I packaged up in a tidy wrapper and tucked in to the deepest pockets of my heart and slapped a big red sticker on it that said “open at your own risk.” 

The truth is my sister died on March 16, 1989. In the physical sense my sister survived the car accident that sent her into the windshield of the truck she was riding in. With impossible gratitude to a witness to the car accident who stopped, pulled her from the vehicle, and brought her back until paramedics arrived I am able to say she is alive. But she did not survive.

In a relational sense, she died that day. Let me clarify. The person that was pulled from the wreckage was not the same 10-year-old little girl that climbed in. My parents will say that was how they moved forward after the tragedy. They had to put one foot in front of the other somehow and letting go of the daughter they had and embracing the one in front of them was easier done by nearly completely separating the two.