Hello

Did you sing that?

I've loved to write since I was a child. It's a gift I never took seriously. Over the years of raising children in a military family I had a few blogs and wrote about our daily life as a way to keep in touch with friends and family we lived far away from. I thought of it as a fun hobby, a small creative outlet with a tiny purpose.

The children grew up and left home and I stopped blogging. There didn't seem to be much to say without their constant presence—and entertainment—and other things (mostly a job) took writing's place. For five years I was silent.

Eventually my family started asking when I was going to write again. The nudging became more persistent and finally I started a new blog, Beyond Momlife, that better reflected where I was in life—empty nest, figuring out who I was other than a mom, our latest adventure of raising beef cattle, the fun of being Grammy.

For four years I wrote from the heart and rediscovered my love of writing. That blog saw me through some major life changes, one of which was a head-on car accident and the (so far) three years of searching for answers to all the resulting issues. During this time I realized so many of my problems were not due to the concussion as I'd thought, but because of trauma. Apparently seeing a car coming at me and knowing it was going to hit me was more than my brain could process in the moment. Being able to write was a big part of my healing journey. As many trauma survivors learn, giving voice to what's going on inside your head helps you process and make sense of the issues as they come up. And when others read what you've written, you find out you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're not imagining things, you're not making it up. Community is powerful.

Then one day *poof* the blog disappeared. Through a series of missed emails and misunderstandings, Beyond Momlife was gone along with all of its content. Lesson: always check your spam folder.

Not trying to be dramatic or anything, but it really was like the death of a friend. I grieved for weeks, months. I'm still sad when I think of all those words, gone. They perfectly described what I was going through and learning during the most difficult time in my life, and their permanent disappearance is a huge personal loss. I will try to bring some of them back to life, but words are fleeting—one day they flow out of fingertips onto the keyboard with no effort; the next they are stuck in my swirling brain and can't get a toehold.

I started using Instagram as a mini-blog, even though often 2,200 characters isn't enough. I was avoiding starting a new blog after the last loss, like not wanting a new puppy after your favorite dog dies. But I have awesome friends and daughters who kept pushing me in that direction. Then one day I wrote this post and was stunned by all the private messages I got thanking me for saying it out loud—that you can be a Christian and go to therapy. That there's no shame in needing help when you've been through traumas in life. That God created our brains and we aren't crazy or losing our minds—our brains are doing what they were designed to do but sometimes they need help processing difficult things so we can get back to "normal."

And so Grace and Therapy was born. I will tell you up front that therapy is not a replacement for grace, which I've learned I need a lot of in this life. I've heard grace described as "God's Redemption At Christ's Expense." We all need Jesus. Without his sinless life, his willing death on the cross, his shed blood, and his resurrection from the dead, we are sinners with no hope. When I trusted that Jesus paid the penalty for my sin, I became a child of God. Jesus took my sin and gave me his righteousness. He took all my bad and I got all his good—an amazing transaction. That's the beginning of hope and it's where I camp every day. I need his grace.

But God gives understanding to good counselors and there is no shame in seeking their help. My therapist is also a Christian and our shared faith makes the perfect combination of knowledge and wisdom.

So while I will write about happy things—grandbabies and cows and hiking and Jesus—I will also tackle the hard parts of a mental health struggle I never asked for. I hope you’ll stick around.