Top 5 . Thanks, 2025.

Feeling less reflective than most years, my thoughts land on a very-zoomed-out version of 2025. If you're interested, they are as follows:

• My Mom died in February but I'm not leaving her there. I'm bringing her with me.

• A puzzle can be your best friend when your son is a Marine at the same table, going through bins from his whole life at home, and on the brink of leaving again. The perfect tool when you're trying to be present, but not too, and distracted from all of those feelings, but not too...

Probably the hardest year of marriage, yet. (The competition is tough when it spans over decades.) We were closer to divorcing than ever before. Spending our 23rd wedding anniversary apart when we could have spent it together was a pretty good sign of the times. Probably not ideal, but still best. 

And guess what? I think we're closer than ever before. (I say I think because I'm still a little afraid to ask him, so we're going with it.) Anyway, didn't see that coming!

That's the thing, isn't it? We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

Another BIG lesson. Which reminds me - in case I haven't said it, and I know I haven't, Thanks, 2025. 

Top 5 Takeaways from 2025 

1. Don't run away just because you don't know how to stay. 

2. What is best is often a long way away from what is ideal. But that makes a lot of sense when you are way past ideal in the first place.

3. It bears repeating...We can't see the good coming around the corner. Even when we're well into the turn. 

4. Use yourself as an untapped resource. We can feel as if we're actually dying if someone else doesn't meet our needs. We're literally wired this way in infancy! In adulthood, we must learn that we won't actually die, we have what we need (or can get it) and we can always help/comfort ourselves. 

5. Prayer for Generosity: Dear Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as You deserve; to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not ask for reward, save that of knowing I am doing your will. Amen.

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As for new beginnings, I propose thoughtful consideration of "Thus far..." or "This again?" 2025 saw me out with timely inspiration between my morning devotional and a Ricky Gervais comedy special. We run the gamut over here. 

2026 started similarly with mumbled conversation across rooms with our teenage son.

.... ... ... ... _______________10:00.

Did you say it's' only 10:00 or it's already 10:00? He answered "already" when pressed (but only because he didn't want to hear another lecture about wishing time away.)

Reminds me of a line in a book I read recently. Something like... Time - Nothing is more valuable nor regarded more cheaply. Preparation for Death by St. Ignatius, I think. Now that I think of it, I just might put that on my headstone.

Is 2026 going to be a thus far, this again, only, or already year? Probably D. All of the above.

God be with you and yours in 2026. Don't run away. We have what we need and there is endless good ahead...

No Place Like Home

Heading back to Texas in the rain could explain the water running down my face, but it doesn't. More accurately but incompletely, visiting the cemetery and Mom's best friend in her old room 167, does.

I guess I'm surprised at how much feeling at "home" in Kansas has to do with being hugged by and hanging out with my Mom.

We had lots of family, great food, hugs, bracelet-making, and football-watching at my Dad's, so it wasn't that there wasn't a lot of good and a lot of love in another home with a lot of great memories. There certainly was. 

I knew it was going to be hard and there was going to be a big void because I spent a lot more time with Mom than anyone else on my visits home, but I'm still surprised at how this feels like homesickness, for her. 

Many widowers have told me they lost their home when their wife died and just live in a house now. I think I'm closer to understanding.

Maybe I'm surprised because Mom lived in a nursing home for her last few years, our roles have been reversed for so long, and being with her always meant attending to a laundry list of things she wanted or needed, and usually right now. 

The lists were so long, I used to write them down so I could marvel at them later. I guess later is now. 

Here's one from my last visit with her, a month before she died:

Look for eye drops. Wash glasses with hot water and Dawn dish soap. Apples cut. Peanut butter on them. Window shade down. Water plants. Find necklace. Find earrings. Go through mail. Clean out text messages. 

Considerably shorter than when she lived alone in her apartment:

First 40 minutes:

Sweep up hominy (implied)

Pick up mail off floor (implied)

Empty pee bag

Put lid on toothpaste

Hang up sweaters (request for later)

Get jacket

Get bag

Close heater vent

Clean glasses

Wash inside of van window (request for later)

Open gum

Go to eyedoctor (request for later)

Get gas (request for later)

Another day:

Hi honey. I need you to...

Pull my shirt down on both sides and wash my glasses.

Get my zebra bag

Take vacuum off charger.

Get my phone off charger.

Put money in my wallet.

Pull my butt (x3) *Translation = reposition me in my wheelchair

Get my bangle bracelets

Move medical alert bracelet to other side

Get poncho

Put scarf on

I need my CPap put back on my bed, but I can ask Janet to do it...

Getting her from A to B was time consuming, even if she was on time, and you could bet against that with all of the money in the Publisher's Clearinghouse. 

It took four strong men to get her into any house and her colostomy, George, leaked at the most inconvenient times. Yes, including last Thanksgiving. She was in tears and just wanted to go home, but we made the best of it, and we're glad we did.

She wasn't talking about Heaven just then, but it would only be three more months until she got to go Home-home. 

She's nestled between a beautiful tree and her Mama. I am very happy for her, and closer to wanting the same thing for myself.

I am newly hopeful that I might, one day, have a similar holding in the hearts of my sons. Sizeable and significant, and if anything like me, quite surprising to them. 

No matter how messy, task-oriented, back-breaking, or upside-down it can get, there seems to be something untouchable about a Mom and her sacred role of introducing and orienting us to life. 

Roles might get reversed, but titles don't. She called me a lot of things (mostly good), but Mom was never one of them. That name-calling went one way, and one way only.

Here's to your Mom and my Mom, home, and the women who not only create it, but are it. Happy Thanksgiving. ❤️🌻

Goulash and Abandoned Tables

I'm standing in the kitchen, making my Mom's goulash recipe (in the same old pan she made it in) for the first time since she died, and in years actually. 

My husband doesn't care for it, but he is on his second week out of town, supporting search efforts for flood victims. My job is to keep things going here and to be grateful, which I am. And I am.

I realize how "white" this recipe is and cook the noodles in beef broth for an attempt at flavor. The miracle of this recipe is twofold. I remember it as delicious AND it doesn't have the staple of staples - cream of mushroom soup. 

My teenage son swoops in and out, shirtless, farting, and making animal sounds in a newly-empty-paper-towel-tube. 

Over my music playing, he shout-sings random lyrics that accompany a melody only he can hear in his solo earbud. 

I laugh and chase him off, but know I don't need to because he'll be gone soon enough. If he's anything like his big brothers, he'll have a girlfriend making steak on Saturday night or living another dream states away, in no time at all.

Just a few weeks ago, I took their kindergarten artwork down and hung up my Mom's in its place. Seasons are strange, but similar in brevity.

Last month, this same teen and I went kayaking. While he was fishing, I gravitated to our old stomping grounds. 

Once, there were swim diapers, mud fights, and free boats with plywood floors that had an excellent chance of needing to be towed back to shore. But that didn't discourage anyone enough to stay on the shore in the first place. 

It's closed to the public now and as I sat there alone, I remembered how often I wished I were alone when my kids were little. Being alone certainly comes, and my encouragement to all with littles, is try not to wish it away. The picnic table will not always be noisy and crowded.

First Responder's Wife

I am the wife of a first responder.

Our marriage has been swamped by every flood and hurricane and hit by every tornado, for more than 20 years. It is hanging on by a thread. The time we're going to be together is always just beyond the next crisis. 

We were on a pontoon boat in Oklahoma the morning of the 4th of July. On board: a distant man working on vacation, a teenage boy who speaks little (and with sarcasm when he does), and a woman's heart throbbing with hope and wild expectation that the time had finally come.

But no. 

There are details and conversations that don't change this one-time-too-many, and she broke.

I broke. 

My sons, Dad and stepmom, brothers and sister, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and their boyfriends and girlfriends all saw it. 

I sobbed off and on for hours and was unapproachable in between.

What is wrong with her?!?!

They suspect grief from losing my mom and mother-in-law in the past year, my son being away in the Marine Corps when he was supposed to be home on leave, hormones, or maybe an undiagnosed medical problem??????

They cannot see that hope deferred makes a heart sick, the way the conversation goes round-and-round, and where a woman's feelings find no place to go or land.

Logic stands opposed to any such display of feelings. It spreads its arms wide to keep us apart. Like a referee in a boxing ring. 

Not to keep us from killing each other. Just to make sure we don't get tangled up in any form of understanding or intimacy that lasts too long.

My husband and others are tempted to believe if I just had less feelings, more love, and more logic, my marriage would be thriving, instead of on the rocks.

Sensibility could politely excuse unnecessary (and embarrassing) spiraling and command every situation with great composure, dignity, and self-respect. 

Of course "he can't help it." Look at all of the good they're doing. This can't possibly be the time to think about yourself. 

And of course it can't. How barbaric and selfish can a woman be? 

I wish my overwheming pride around their exhaustive training, courage, and honorable work, and in the people who are doing it, and horror and grief at the suffering and mind-numbing loss of life would displace the newness and the oldness of 20 years of going it alone. 

I wish it did. 

It reminds me of a hospice patient we had once. She felt so bad and ashamed she couldn't stop wondering if those ugly bumps on her hands were cancer after the war in the Ukraine broke out.

So we move forward, in silence. Separately bewildered, bemoaning, and grieving what has happened to the innocent, and grateful he has to go to work as soon as we get home.

The time apart seems to be the only way we can stay together. 

And so I pray. For me. My husband. All first responders, their spouses and families, and all whom they are serving - where the real problems are. 

(Pic taken after spontaneous visit to church to pray for all of the above)

Beach Surprises

My home state, land-locked Kansas, probably helps the ocean affect me the way it does. 

It reminds me how much I love quiet because it is never quiet, and it makes my body feel small but not my mind. I find things where I don't expect them and the other way around.

How does a mighty ocean require no container and stay within its bounds? Pools, ponds, and lakes seem to require far more. 

How can a ship seem big - in the ocean? And how can you still almost not see it/them?  (Zoom in!) Begs the question of what else I am missing, albeit a little closer to home.

None of my business, except I happened to be hanging out on our rented porch. A man followed a woman around with a camera in one hand and a baby carrier in the crook of his arm. She walked away and back again, along the shore, into the water, looked back over her shoulder, sat down, stood up, bent her knee, put her hands on her hip, and on and on for what seemed like a really.long.time. My arm was getting tired for that guy. 

Probably a fleeting and unbidden moment of solidarity, but I never want to ask someone to take my picture again. 

Okay, last thing - Christmas trees! So much joy for the many who celebrate - with all of the wonder lights, presents, and tucked-away cats can bring... 

But that's not all. Another noble task awaits.

Thank you, Christmas trees. I want to take a page out of your book. (Sorry, very insensitive to reference paper. But thank you for that, too.) 

May being useful in death lessen the sting for us when it is our turn. Certainly, we'll be more generous.

 

Emotionally Hungry

Sometimes, it's like you're starving. But you don't know you're starving because you've never really been hungry for more than a few hours at a time. And yet, emotional hunger is hunger too. 

It would hardly be worth mentioning if it only lasted for days, much less hours. But it can persist for years and quite insidiously, unrecognized!

All you know is that others are feasting, and you are not okay. But, not to worry. The ones you love most are there and will think of you when the feast is over. Rest assured, they will phone before they turn in and call it a night. 

You learn that waiting for calls to come after the feasting is especially bad for you, because you imagine the feasting the whole time you are waiting for the phone to ring, while you are so hungry yourself. So you give instructions that calling earlier is better, so sleep can come sooner - if one is lucky enough to sleep.

On a good day, you can answer. But you're quieter and more withdrawn than usual. You don't need to look at your knuckles to know. White-knuckling has been the best description of the whole damn thing for as long as you can remember, even though it doesn't actually describe anything at all. 

You muster some willpower, hoping it will be enough to pass for normal, as you recount honorable mentions from the day and press on your stomach to muffle the hunger pangs. Whatever it takes to patch through to the next day and the next, so it can be "over with," and you can recover. 

Settle back into some semblance of normalcy when all becomes familiar again. A normal work week is proof that no real harm was incurred. When the pit in your stomach subsides, you know all is well. Normal operations can resume. Crisis averted.

Recovery becomes a series of unsatisfactory conversations about better timing of phone calls, what information to give, how it never seems to be just right, trying to explain why you want to know about every-little-thing they ate, and what time would be better for a starving person to talk about a feast they aren't invited to? 

All of this, instead of penetrating the mystery of how one got so hungry in the first place or what one might need to feel less hungry and desperate as an uninvited guest...

But you take all of the responsibility for your brokenness and being disagreeable, and vow to work harder to sound normal on the phone and solve the problem of your hunger and reactivity, all while being completely unable to convey how much starving compounds this problem for you. 

Ironically, in your complicity, you feed the very idea that starves you: This is all your fault, and it shouldn't be this hard. 

You agree that it shouldn't. The solution seems simple enough, but not simple enough to be solved. Just simple enough to be repeated. For decades.

By some miracle, you and I found another person who had experienced and studied emotional hunger so thoroughly and knew it so intimately, that she forged a pathway through it to the other side. While she said many, many things, albeit few of the words here, this is what I heard:

Emotional hunger doesn't take an inordinate amount of food to be satiated. A consistent, dependable source, with even a modest amount of nourishment, is plenty to meet the need. Don't give up. Discover what you need, go to the source, and here is how...step-by-step. 

May God be with us as we hunger, learn, adapt, and persevere. Amen.

**This post is a reflection and dramatization of my lived experience relating to a profound need for emotional connection and struggle when that need is unmet, as well as the importance of communication, relational dynamics, attachment styles/wounds/core beliefs, and personal responsibility.

There is another side, and I am traveling to it. I am waiting on the little piece of paper (Licensed Professional Counselor - Associate) that makes me an official travel guide. It won't be long now. I hope and plan to take as many people as I am able to the other side - where needs are explored, known, met, and understood. If I can be of help to you, please let me know.

If you are interested in learning more about the "person who experienced and studied emotional hunger so thoroughly," it is my privilege to introduce you to Thais Gibson and her Personal Development School...an easy-to-approach (as well as digest) treatment on attachment styles, fears, needs and a pathway to healing, all borne out of her own suffering.

Personal Development | Attachment Styles | The Personal Development School

Different at Night

She's different at night. 

The daytime people don't know her. When there is no one to smile at or sing to, she goes far away, stands on top of the world and looks down to feel the largeness of space and brevity of time. Her face tells the story even when words are far from her mouth.

When they do come, she confirms what you thought you heard her say... It's almost over. My heart is giving way. Jesus will take care of me and he will take great care of you too.

In an hour or so, she wants to brush her teeth, shave her whiskers, and yes to wiping her face. Her friends are coming in a few hours. 

She sinks back to sleep, right up until her friends walk through the door. 

She pinks up and smiles. 

Kisses and hugs and stories fill the room followed by more and more people with their own kisses and hugs and stories. Like a movie of her whole life where the characters from different chapters bump into each other for once and for all.

She performs her favorite song surrounded by an audience of a lifetime. Her head nods and she sports a knowing smile. Her hand taps and the words stumble out or go quiet when they get confused or don't match what that guy is singing so well.

In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep...

Chips and dip and margaritas, and they left as they came. Slumber returned before they made it to the end of the hall.

When she goes, she said we'll know she made it to heaven when we hear a big crack of thunder.

Her room is dark, except for the light escaping from the bathroom so we can see her face. She sleeps in her wheelchair, determined not to get back into bed. 

The rumble of a storm approaches with an occasional flash of light. She is laid back and covered and her breathing is slight.

She parties by day but she is different at night.