I’m sitting on my deck, overlooking the woods, a cool breeze shifts through make the leaves bow and rise, bow and rise . . . almost as if they’re nodding in agreement with the chill in the air–change is coming.

And it isn’t just the movement that reflects coming winter, it’s in the shifting of colors–shading from green to red to brown. And I can’t help contemplating change and coming to the end of things.

Have you noticed that fall trees give a master class in making the end of something beautiful?

It’s something I’m trying to do right now–making the end beautiful.

This fall has been a series of massive changes for my family:

• You all know that we brought our daughter to college in August and
• our son is now a freshman in high school,
• but last Friday was also my last day working for a company I’ve worked for for 25 years. It’s literally a lifetime I’m saying goodbye to. I’m excited because it means more time for my family and more tonight for my writing. But it absolutely feels like a death.

While I want to handle this change like the brilliant sugar maples, I fear that I am more like the trees slowly fading to brown. Ugly, boring, slightly weepy brown. Do you relate?

But just as I think that, my son reminds me how much I like walking in the crisp brown leaves. I love the sharp crackle. The feeling of a slight resistance . . . perhaps brown isn’t so terrible after all

So when I get stuck in fear or sadness, I take on a few strategies:

• BREATHE. Purposeful breath is fantastic for grounding and making me hold on a hot second.
• Look at it. Shame and fear thrive in darkness. But if I turn and look at things with curiosity, it opens me up to why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling and it gives me the opportunity to be gracious toward myself.
• Get thankful. I think of one or two things I’m grateful for. It shifts my focus.
• Make progress. I find one SMALL thing I can do to take a step forward. I give myself permission to not do everything. Instead I do a tiny thing. Clean for 5 minutes. Write one email. Make a to do list for tomorrow.

What about you? What strategies do you have for overcoming fear, shame, and sadness during change?

Want more of my writing, check out my books (with a little deliciously creepy, a little cool history, a lot of real hope)? Check out my books HERE.

This summer has been . . . well, interesting. Here in Michigan, we’re still mostly locked down and our summer didn’t look like we expected at all. While we can now go to a restaurant with masks on and my son can practice soccer with his team, my swimmer can’t swim and we’re still figuring out exactly what school (and therefore my work) schedules will look like.

My promise with you has always been that I would be real. So I will. Like many, I’m struggling. It’s hard. Hard to read; hard to focus. But life has also been good. And I’m trying very hard to live there.

My daughter is healthy. And this summer despite the lack of pools, Michigan has plenty of lakes.

We had a fantastic vacation to Northern Michigan. Including a visit to Mackinac Island (with masks on for the ferry ride):

My daughter wasn’t able to get a job or swim, but she did finish her summer Spanish course, earned her driver’s permit, and started a micro cake baking business. She makes some crazy-cool things out of chocolate, cake, and frosting:

And of course if there isn’t anything else to entertain us, there’s always Brave the cat!

I’ve also read mass quantities of books in the last few months. You can keep up with me over on GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1012615.Janyre_Tromp) I find myself veering toward mysteries. If you’d like to check out a few free options, you might try those in this link: https://books.bookfunnel.com/christian-novels/mmluhu4zkk

Drop me a comment to let me know what you’re reading these days and how you’re doing. I’d love to hear from you.

Today I’m hanging out over at Jerusha Agen’s blog talking about fear and tough times. Here’s a bit of it. To finish click the link and head on over to The Fear Warrior Blog.

Anyone who knows me knows I love taking pictures, putting them in albums and displaying them on my walls. Photography helps me freeze the world and make sense of it one frame at a time. But it’s been a long while since I’ve had a moment to sort through my photographs. Two years to be semi-precise. And there’s good reason—in addition to some significant health issues for my mom and I, my daughter was hospitalized six times in two different hospitals as she fought for her life. That’ll do a number on you for sure.

It’s a strange feeling to flip through the photos, and watch the weeks leading up to my girl’s collapse and first hospitalization roll past, blissful in their unknowing of the impending disasters. Four weeks before I was at the Michigan State capital with my son’s class. Three weeks before—the State swimming championship meet with my daughter. Only a week before shows sweeping panoramas of mountains and smiling faces on Spring Break in at the St. Louis zoo, then Branson, Missouri.

I see occasional dark circles under my daughter’s eyes, remember that my girl wasn’t feeling well, and yet we had no idea that her body was filling with infection, and her body trying to ward off disaster by bandaging her organs with scar tissue.

Click here to continue:

https://jerushaagen.com/the-good-hand-how-knowing-the-who-beats-your-fear-in-tough-times/

Any of you that know me know that I have a huge passion for history. But I didn’t always. Before college, history was a collection of random of dates about people who died long before my memory.

It took an assignment from my college US History professor to get me hooked. The assignment? Go talk to a family member about WWII, the Great Depression, or Korea and write a paper about it.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t thrilled about this assignment. At the time, I was a Chemistry major (yes, Chemistry and that’s a story for another time), but I loved my grandparents and gladly took the opportunity to visit Grandma and Bobpa (our nickname for my grandpa) to talk about their lives.

Over glasses of lemonade, I found out how my grandmother went to college (with a fur coat no less) and graduated. They told me about the decision they made that my grandfather sign up before he was drafted into WWII so he could stave off being shipped over. He eventually became a liaison pilot, of whom 7 out of 10 didn’t come home. Overseas, he dragged around a piano box with a hole in it to use as a portable outhouse. And a host of other recollections I now have logged in my memory.

Every story they told showed me a different part of who they were, who I am. Stories tell me what life was like, the mistakes, hopes, and dreams of another generation.

In a very real way, my grandparent’s stories gave birth to my love of story.

As I grew older and studied, I began to realize that my passion for stories was actually based in science. The tremendous power of story is that it gives us a relatively safe place to figure out relationships and life’s questions.

But it all started with my grandparent’s war stories.