“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”

This blog post will be unorganized and messy, kind of like the current state of my life right now. I generally try and formulate my thoughts, and scroll them across the screen with some semblance of eloquence. But as I drag myself into the last weeks of this horrendous year I'm just tired and weary. Generally when the new year approaches I like to look back and examine the lessons we've learned, appreciate the blessings we encountered along the way, and make goals for the future. I like to the take the year as a whole and bundle it up into a beautiful package and set it on the shelf in my mind to revisit. 2019 however, I want to mangle it into a ball, wrap it in a trash bag, and duct tape it shut with a good boot into the abyss of my subconscious. Even though I can't poignantly speak about the ridiculousness we encountered, there were certainly lessons to be learned. I don't particularly want to revisit it, But I wouldn't want to minimize the importance of God working even in our darkest valleys. Because even in one of the worst years of our lives thus far. We can still attest, maybe even louder than before. God is good. Always.

2018 was the calm before the storm and we didn't even know it. We recognized it as a year of recouping after catastrophic loss. Sully's step-dad Terry was killed in an automobile accident in January & cancer took my mom in May of 2017. We limped into 2018 with heavy hearts, and God took pity on us. We enjoyed a year without any overwhelming tragedies. We grew closer together as a family. We renewed our relationship with the Lord, got back into the word and relinquished a lot of our plans and aspirations seeking out instead, His. We felt like we had been through the refiners fire and we were enjoying this curing season in our lives. In Isaiah 64:8 it says, "But now, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are all the work of your hand." I never really thought much about that scripture until high school when I took an art class and learned the process of creating pottery. And it really struck a chord with me as we entered the kiln of grief starting in 2015 that lasted through 2017. When 2018 swept in with its peace, calm and restoration we rejoiced. And we approached each and every day with gratitude. Because the torridity that we had endured was still fresh in our minds. But we got arrogant with 2019. The heat had cooled, and we got comfortable. And when the storm raged in we were unprepared.

Alaska has been weird weather-wise this year, we were moseying through December without any significant snowfall. Not only did we have dirt showing, we had warm enough temperatures that we were getting rain. Because of this strange phenomenon we put off our winterization efforts and lollygagged around. And by we I mean me, because we all know Sully is the epitome of prepared, how he fell in love and married Mrs. Procrastination I will never fully understand, but I thank my lucky stars! But I digress...back to the unpreparedness for the change of seasons. Let me tell you...old man winter eventually made his appearance. While Sully was on the rig; overnight, a foot and a half of heavy wet snow accumulated. The trees couldn't bear the weight and folded over the power lines and roadways all across the state. Because I wasn't prepared, I went days without power. Even though I had a generator sitting in my garage, with the flip of a switch I could have be unscathed by the outages. But I had never taken the time to learn how to bleed the fuel lines, choke it, turn it on and hook it up to the house. I also hadn't taken the time to learn how to light the finicky wood stove in our basement, and in my desperation to heat the house so my very sick kiddos could stay warm amidst the frigid temperatures, I instead smoked out the entire house. Moral of the story? Be wise. Prepare ahead. There is a difference between being a negative Nancy and being ready. You don't have to live in fear of the next awful thing around the bend, but it certainly doesn't hurt to be aware that bad things happen. In hindsight, having Sully give me the 411 on the generator, wood stove, & how to operate the snow blower BEFORE  Alaska's Snowmageddon, it wouldn't have been such an ordeal. I think the same can be said for our unpreparedness for what 2019 had in store for us. You can savor tranquility in your life, you can soak in every ounce of the placidity. But always know that it's usually these times in life that give us the strength to encounter the squalls ahead. 2019 nearly sunk us. It felt like for most of the year we were just struggling to keep our heads above water, and in the turmoil all the things we learned and gleaned from experiences past...we forgot. Why can we hold grudges for decades, yet beneficial wisdom doesn't stay with us? It's a conundrum I tell ya. I often can't understand why I prefer to learn things the hard way.

Back when my mom first was sick, and life felt like a broken record, with the needle stuck on pain & suffering...I ran into an acquaintance at a grocery store. She was patronizing to say the least, she took the liberty to inform me that our unfortunate circumstances must be the result of God's judgement on us, though she wasn't brazen enough to offer up exactly what offense she may be referring to. For good measure she did mention that church attendance might help our plight and then went on her merry way. At the time I didn't have the energy to formulate a response, let alone offer up and explanation to my kids who had heard the exchange. In fact I didn't think about it again until days later when on the way to school Aiden brought it up. For a ten year old, who was still trying to understand WHO God was, and what His character entails...this woman's depiction was a negative representation. Thankfully Aiden didn't just accept this stranger's synopsis of God as truth. He went back to the beginning of creation, to the garden where humanity was given free will and we chose the selfish desires of our flesh over the will of God. And from that moment on we have suffered the consequences of sin, and continue to do so. Death, disease, poverty, famine, and war were never God's intent for us. We chose it. And we continue to choose it. And the result is a fallen world. Granted this is paraphrased from the mouths of babes, I cannot recollect his utterly profound statement verbatim but this was the gist. And that could have been the end of the story. We suffer because we are sinful, that is the guarantee of living on this planet. But that is not the end of the story. Jesus flipped the script, and we can rest in the assurance that although we will suffer, we will never suffer in vain. And in the end, we will be restored.

When cancer once again invaded our lives this summer, with it's insidious stranglehold there were a lot of bewildered hearts crying out, "Why?!"  It was a sucker punch, Sully's oldest brother, and his lifelong friend was diagnosed with a rare terminal cancer. There wasn't even time to process things as they came, he lived only a month from his diagnosis. His family & friends banded together and surrounded him & each other with amazing love and support. And I watched helplessly as they walked the road my family had walked just years prior. And I remembered Aiden's wise-beyond-his-years evaluation of why. God was not handing out cancer willy-nilly to the people we love as some sort of punishment. As I listened to the distressed pleas of the hearts who loved Big Sully rhetorically ask, "Why him" all I could think about was a quote by Philip Yancey in his book 'Where is God when it Hurts'.  Philip Yancey is undisputedly my favorite author, and he put it best when he said, "As we rely on God, and trust his Spirit to mold us in his image, true hope takes shape within us, a hope that does not disappoint. We can literally become better persons because of suffering. Pain, however meaningless it may seem at the time, can be transformed. Where is God when it hurts? He is in us-not in the things that hurt-helping to transform bad into good. We can safely say that God can bring good out of evil; we cannot say that God brings about the evil in hopes of producing good." As we encounter all of life's unpleasantries we have to keep this at the forefront of our minds.

I realized this year how unhealthy our coping mechanisms are. We most certainly have a default that we fall into when life is complicated. Because, more often than not, when tragedies occur they disrupt the normal flow of things. Our default looks somethings like this: unhealthy diet, lack of adequate sleep, overuse of electronics, family disconnect, and disruption of routines. I think I lack the ability to multitask properly. Or I am a perfectionist so if I can't do it 100% then I don't even try? Either way...I cannot control the ebb and flow of life, and I need to learn to ride the waves. I have such a short time left with my kids, and I am in charge of equipping them for LIFE and if they learn by example...we are in big trouble. That is definitely an area I am going to work on in 2020.

2019 wasn't all bad. Although the bad was BAD and overshadowed the good, there was still good! I wish I was better at putting my focus on the latter rather than the former. I suppose it's in our nature to notice the discomforts, but I wish we spent more of our time and energy in the thankful spirit for the blessings in life instead. I imagine that is where we have to be intentional, fight our sinful human nature to be self seeking and try and emulate God's nature instead. I have read a lot of books in my journey through grief over the years. Ann Voskamp's 'One Thousand Gifts' was one that didn't necessarily talk so much about loss as it talked about the importance of gratitude no matter what circumstances are swirling in your life. Her point was that if you are always striving to live out thanksgiving you are less likely to be encumbered by the trap of discontentment.

And I can't really touch on the sorrows of 2019 without including the nail in the proverbial coffin of this craptastic year. Kimber. The disappearance of our beloved family dog. Kimber encapsulates so much more than just a pet. In May of 2018 we adopted her from a rescue. I had resisted getting a dog, much to Sully's dismay, for the bulk of our marriage. I felt like the oilfield schedule coupled with the responsibilities of parenting was just to much to add any high maintenance pets into the mix, and just to clarify ALL dogs are high maintenance. I knew that if I committed to a dog, it would mean my daily life would change. I didn't want a dog if it was going to be kenneled all day long. I wanted a dog that would fit in with our family and be well behaved enough to take with us most places. And I will be honest, it wasn't love and first sight with Kimber. In fact, for the past year and half it has been  a brutal learning curve. She is a high energy dog who requires a lot of exercise, so twice a day I run her with the ranger ten miles. And even twenty miles a day doesn't always alleviate some of her bad habits. The dog is impossible to keep at home. Her favorite thing to do is wander the neighborhood, her favorite destination is Marley's house. The two became best doggy friends and would travel back and forth between houses daily. We spent hundreds of dollars trying to contain her. She is a Houdini like no other dog I have ever known. But she never goes far. She stays in our neighborhood and she ALWAYS comes home, usually with Marley in tow. Until October 30th. I really can't describe how awful it has been, day after day hanging in limbo. We have no idea what happened to our dog. But because of the circumstances of her disappearance there is hope she is still alive. We have gone over so many scenarios in our minds. Did someone shoot her? Did she get hit by a car? Did someone pick her up and take her? We may never know. Over the past nearly two months we have been from one end of the peninsula to the other looking for her. Following every lead to it's bitter end. Kimber has stretched me so far outside of my comfort zone. I have knocked on doors in sketchy neighborhoods and I have overcome my timid nature when talking to strangers. We have realized we have the most common looking dog on the peninsula. There are so many look alikes. We have heard a million stories of people who lost their dogs and found them after a significant amount of time has passed. So we try and stay hopeful, and we are vigilant (but a lot wiser) when following leads. We no longer fly into the car and drive hundreds of miles on a 'possible' sighting. I think the hardest part of this whole debacle is dealing with the insensitivity of others. I have to rationalize to myself often, that some people just aren't lucky enough to know the immense love you can have for your pet, and vice versa. A word of advice...even if you don't understand someone's grief, empathy is always a better choice than negativity.

Because of the gaping and painful void in our lives, I was desperate to fix it. Against the wise counsel of others we decided to adopt two adorable puppies. Not only did it compound an enormous amount of stress on an already frazzled and emotionally tapped mom. It added exponentially to the grief of the kids. We felt like it was incredibly unfair to all parties involved to keep them, so we returned them to the rescue and they will do an amazing job of finding them loving homes. Instead of the dogs healing our broken hearts we really just missed Kimber more. We put so much time and energy into Kimber that by the time she disappeared we literally had worked out all the kinks. She knew what was expected of her, we knew what was expected of us...and life was easy. We had made it through the puppy stage and we finally had found our groove. The very thought of going through that all again is unimaginable. It is a really hard lesson. Just another of many 2019 was unkind enough to teach us. I honestly am unsure if I can ever go through this again. I just keep begging God to bring our girl home. Praying for a miracle.

Sully leaves on Christmas Eve for his last hitch of 2019. We struggled emotionally to even get to a place where we even want to celebrate the holidays. I know that 2020 likely will hold its own set of joys and sorrows. My hope that despite the circumstances in our lives, we aren't derailed by them. That we set and achieve our goals, even if it isn't easy. That we GROW deeper in our relationship with the Lord instead of being stagnant. More than anything I hope we take all the things that 2019 taught us and we use it for good. That we don't allow the stress, chaos, unanswered prayers, and grief plant a bitter root in us. I am thankful for the fresh start a new year brings. I am grateful that even though we are haggard at the finish line, we are crossing it together. I am especially excited for another chance to do better. To work harder at being a more attentive mom and a more loving wife. That I have another opportunity to strive towards my personal goals.

Last years motto fits nicely as this years too. "Always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse and regret." And I'll follow it up with a scripture, that also goes perfectly as a theme for 2020. "Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Galatians 6:9

Thank you to the people who click on my links and read my crazy. It never ceases to amaze me that I don't even know the majority of people who read my blog, I just see a number. A number that humbles me to my core. So again...Thank you!