People often ask me, "How did you get here?"
The answer isn't simple.
It wasn't one event or one difficult season. It was thirty years of little moments that shaped our family into who we are today.
Jim and I were married on December 7, 1996, at the little church where we met. We were young, excited, and full of dreams for the future. We had already bought our first home before we were married, and after our honeymoon I moved in with Jim... and our dog.
We couldn't wait to start our family.
Like so many young couples, we believed that seeing two pink lines meant we would soon be holding a baby.
Instead, we experienced the heartbreak of miscarriage.
Then another.
Eventually God blessed us with our oldest son, Justin, followed by Paige, Blake, Samantha, Bryce, and finally Chloe. Each of my pregnancies came with their own challenges, and along the way we experienced another heartbreaking pregnancy loss.
Our family grew, but so did life's challenges.
There were seasons of steady jobs and seasons of unemployment.
We bought homes.
We lost homes.
We moved across states and back again.
We lived with family while trying to rebuild our lives.
We homeschooled our children, camped together, laughed around movie nights, celebrated birthdays, and made wonderful memories in the middle of ordinary life.
Then our world changed.
Paige became seriously ill.
After months of searching for answers, she was diagnosed with Lyme disease, co-infections, and tick-borne illnesses. Not long afterward, Samantha received the same diagnosis.
Then Chloe.
Overnight, our lives became filled with specialists, therapies, medications, hospital stays, emergency room visits, medical equipment, oxygen tanks, seizures, and countless doctor's appointments.
Caregiving became our full-time life.
Just when we thought we had found some stability again, life shifted once more.
The home we believed would be our forever home was sold, and in December of 2025 we packed up nearly everything we owned, placed the rest in storage, and moved four hours away to live in travel trailers near the river.
It wasn't the life we had imagined.
But sometimes God writes stories we never would have chosen ourselves.
If our thirty years of marriage could be summed up in just a few words, they would probably look something like this:
Love.
Loss.
Faith.
Waiting.
Starting over.
Unexpected blessings.
Heartbreak.
Hope.
Our story has been filled with all of them.
When people tell me, "I don't know how you've survived everything your family has been through," I honestly don't know how to answer.
Because the truth is...
I didn't survive it alone.
God met me in every season.
He was with me on the bathroom floor as I grieved pregnancies we would never hold.
He was in the delivery room when doctors prepared us for the worst, only to place a healthy baby in our arms.
He provided through job losses when we had no idea how the bills would be paid.
He sat beside me through emergency room visits, sleepless nights, and countless days when I didn't think I had the strength to keep going.
There were days I felt strong.
But there were many more when I simply put one foot in front of the other.
God met me right there.
Every single time.
I don't have it all together.
I'm not a perfect wife, mom, or Christian.
I'm simply a woman who has walked through some very dark valleys and discovered that God's grace is faithful in every single one of them.
Over the coming months, I'll share many of these stories in greater detail. The miracles. The heartbreaks. The lessons. The moments that changed our family forever.
My prayer is that somewhere in our story, you'll find hope for your own.
Because if there's one thing I've learned over the last thirty years, it's this:
The same grace that carried me...
...is available to carry you too.
Grace carried me yesterday.
Grace is carrying me today.
Grace will carry me tomorrow.
Thanks for walking this journey with me.
— Jennifer