Anything but Pretty

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One of the best things about gray days is the way colors pop against the gloom.

I think there’s probably a lesson in there somewhere, but this season has been long enough that my brain can’t put it together.

This weekend we brought my girl to the other side of the state to the ER there (after being released from the local kids hospital on Wednesday). They gave us different pain meds that actually work and have given us hope that we might get on top of this thing.

We’ve missed so much about summer already. I have a hard time looking at other people’s pictures of vacations and beaches and road trips.

My girl has been laid up for two summers now. I miss days without pain. I miss exploring with my girl. I miss my kids playing together. I miss our life.

I don’t want to miss any more.

I’m trying. Don’t miss what’s in front of you.

And so I try to take my own advice. If you know anything about me, you know how much I love color, nature in general, and flowers in particular.

I think that’s why I’m so grateful for my window boxes this year. (That’s where the photo is from.) I don’t have to go far to get a breath of classic beauty to give me strength to slog through this season where beauty is anything but pretty.

Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland

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A little more than 2 weeks ago, I left the hospital with my daughter where she’d nearly died a second time in two months.

Last night we celebrated her 13th birthday with a few of her friends out on Lake Michigan. And I’m in awe, slightly scared, fighting off tears (because that would be “totally embarrassing, mom!”). Continue reading “Restore—Rivers in the Dry Wasteland” →

Just as Beautiful

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I went on a walk with my girl (who just got out of the hospital…again) and saw these lovely leaves sprouting from the side of a tree.

It made me think:

Sometimes new growth is just a beautiful as flowers. Tweet This Continue reading “Just as Beautiful” →

Losing Faith

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I have a secret. One that I’m barely able to admit to myself let alone commit to words…especially those permanently affix to a blog post.

I think I’m losing faith.

Somewhere between God’s got it figured out and God loves you, it all seems to crumble, rushing through the holes of my conscious thought and into waking nightmare. I’m in the ER with my girl…again. Continue reading “Losing Faith” →

Healing in the Intensive Care Unit

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My daughter’s room was entombed in an unnatural twilight. The only light leaked from the monitors hanging from the IV poles and the enormous screen bearing her weak vital signs. Enormous curtains draped the windows, which, instead of revealing the living city, opened to the hallway and the nurses’ station.

Fitting I suppose. Life is a very fragile thing in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit—something to be tucked away and protected, outside the reach of the infection ravaging the limp body of the girl on the bed. This place was no place for a 12-year-old girl who 3 weeks before swam in one of the most elite meets in the state. Continue reading “Healing in the Intensive Care Unit” →

Blessed—When It Isn’t What You Think

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I’ve spent the two weeks thinking about the future. It isn’t necessarily a “New Year’s Resolution” or even a “Word for the Year” kind of pondering. It’s more of a “what do I want to be” kind of processing.

2017 was hard. I spent a vast majority of social gatherings silently pleaded with everyone I met not to say, “Well, it could be worse!” Because life in the Tromp house always seemed to become worse.

But somewhere in the tears, exhaustion, and bracing myself for what would come next, I began to redefine a few things. Big things.

Like the words, “I’m blessed.”

Are there any two words more misused than “I’m blessed”?

Continue reading “Blessed—When It Isn’t What You Think” →

Motivate—Life’s Curse

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Life goes, clicking along, time slipping, easy until
falling
scrambling,
clattering,
broken

LOST
lost, Lord, I’m lost

fears,
tears,
searches,
questions

Solutions, ideas, suggestions, all well-meaning
clutter,
frustrate,
choke

Makes me scream silent
cling,
slip,
cling,
slip,

again

again

again

 

This was written in response to the Five Minute Friday prompt:  Motivate. It’s rather ironic that I struggled deeply with this week’s prompt. The rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing.

I pretty much destroyed all the rules this week.

This is the result of my fourth go at this prompt. I still hate it…and, in addition, I’m still in the quagmire of plot problems and writer’s block for a novel starring Sam and his wife Charlotte (you met them in short stories here and here).

I know all the suggestions, all the tricks, but every time I throw myself at this, it shatters at my feet.

But I sit behind the computer and cling to what I know and have a go again…

I’m learning that questioning yourself, your faith, your work, isn’t always a bad thing.

As scary as doubt is, it is often the doorway to new, unseen discoveries. Tweet This

How about you? Where are you struggling to motivate yourself?

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Finding the Different—and Seeing the Good

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White stretches long reaching to the horizon where it curves seamless into the sky, over my head. A cocoon of monotone silence.

The frozen world can preserve, but it is cold welcome to stand static and alone…sense of self captured like some ancient beast in an iceberg—extinct and yet still here.

I snuggle my nose down into the collar of my coat, thankful for the heat preserved inside it. A short squeal and swish, and my son lands pell-mell at my feet. A mound of blue and grey against the snow. Continue reading “Finding the Different—and Seeing the Good” →

Parental Sacrifice and the Hope It Provides

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There is a core of who I am that is tangled in music. I grew up going to symphonies, playing in some of the best bands and orchestras in the state. I was through and through a clarinet-playing, band geek.

My house has a nearly constant musical score running underneath.

There I am with the pep band. Apparently I have no pictures of me ACTUALLY playing. You'll just have to trust that I did.
There I am with the pep band. Apparently I have no pictures of me ACTUALLY playing. You’ll just have to trust that I did.

My husband is forever noodling on his guitars. I write to music and sing snippets of Broadway, Mother Goose, Louis Armstrong, Simon and Garfunkle, and even “Uptown Funk” to my kids.

Music draws pictures and speaks words I cannot always form coherently. You know what I mean?

Continue reading “Parental Sacrifice and the Hope It Provides” →

A Picture, a Girl, and a Reminder—Worth a Thousand Words

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From the moment my daughter was born, she was most content when not inside. As a baby, the best way to calm her colicky crying was to snuggle her in a bouncy seat under the maple tree or, when it got cold, take her for a ride in a sled.

During her early years, I spent hours in the woods trailing a toddler looking for critters under overturned logs, disguised behind leaves, and lurking in the water. We amazed at how they were created to adapt to their environment and needs.

I started photographing the animals we found and put them into a book for my girl…and those little books became board books published a few years back. (Check out the All About God’s Animal series over here. They’d make a great Christmas gift.)

My girl is a tween now and doesn’t need me by her side as she builds tree forts and digs for fishing worms. And so it’s been a long, long time since I hunted the woods, beaches, and waterways for critters and nature to capture on film.

my-girlUntil now. Continue reading “A Picture, a Girl, and a Reminder—Worth a Thousand Words” →