Regenerate

Sea Cucumbers

Do you know of them? Their ability to regenerate, or as 20-year-old Max explains to me, “to grow and to grow again?” Sea cucumbers, as a defense, can release their organs to a predator, slipping away to be quietly reborn in 1-5 weeks. Spending themselves entirely. Allowing themselves to be made new.

Waiting patiently, week after week, knowing restoration is already happening within them. Knowing change is on its way.

They do not sow their failures, reap their mistakes. They do not store away each hurt. They do not cater to their wounds and they do not cling to their scars.

Instead: they spill their guts, surrender their insides, become reborn.

They regenerate, and regenerate again.

It sounds a bit like mercy, I think. And patience. Quietly, expectantly awaiting your own small and many rebirths. Delivering them, then allowing them to deliver you.

The things we keep

& The Stories We Keep Close

Markus is passionate about hockey, record breaking and window-down, top-of-the-lung car singing. Welcome (back) to High School Hockey.

The Person My Family Needs

Morgen, Max and Markus are my biggest priority; my proudest prize.

Motherhood and marriage are hard work and I’m fairly unapologetic about learning to be better at both. It’s an ever-evolving process – one that I do not take lightly. When Morgen was first born, the balance seemed pretty steady. The plates didn't spin too fast; the expectations weren't piled too high. Still somewhere along the way, I realized that – for me – the only plates I truly wanted to spin were the ones that held my family. And then it became easier. Far, far easier. And far more enjoyable. When I stopped fighting for the person I thought I wanted to be and – instead – embraced the person my family needed, everything shifted. Because it turns out, the person I want to be is the person my family needs. I cannot serve those beyond my four walls and neglect the needs within my own home.

Today's Encouragement

On the night of a bad day, I wonder if people truly change. If we’re all just out here screwing each other up or if there is, as I’ve been taught, a capacity for a better way.

The angry encounter peace? Can the yeller stop yelling?

And then, this:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

I used to think this was an old verse about material goods, about how meaningless it was to buy objects void of permanence. You can’t take it with you, and all that. I used to think this was a simple reminder that we’re wasting precious hours adding another chunky knit sweater to our cart, or fretting over our 10-year plan.

And yet, when I re-read it, later mulling it over at the kitchen sink scrubbing steak from the pan, I think it might be about tomorrow, sure, but also yesterday.

why i blog

the things we keep

By day, I change dressings and write nursing notes and input orders and answer emails. I speak to patient's with cancer, say another prayer, brew another coffee. By day I travel the world, or at least the grocery store. I read another chapter and battle another bad habit. I fry bacon. I change my outfit. I refill my water glass and then start the laundry and sing lullabies and search for that ubiquitous missing sock yet again.

By night, I write it all down here.