Category: Etc.

4 Tips on Making Change Beautiful

Janyre5 Comments

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.

Take a Breath

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I think one of the hardest things that came from having a kid who once fought for her life is the knowledge of what could happen.

At the time, I couldn’t really process…and with everything going on, there hasn’t been much of a breath. I’m pretty sure you understand.

Two of the books I read in the past year—The Body Keeps the Score and Try Softer—talk about how your body will tell you it’s struggling and it will get louder until you take the time to deal with the stuff.

Well, I thought I was doing okayish until my ears started ringing and my gut was screaming. Of course I panicked a little about what could happen. Then my host of doctors told me that I needed to cut back and do a better job of listening to the stress signals in my body.

I was, apparently, not okay.
 
So We’re Starting Again
 
I’m acknowledging that I’m scared and I’m stressed and it’s absolutely okay to take a second to breathe. It’s okay to tell work, “I’m gonna need a second.”

Now I’m working with my kids to teach them self-care all while reminding myself to do the same.

We’ve had sips of time for learning Euchre, made elbow room for counseling, and gained energy from quiet mornings over good books and a notebook. My girl (the same one who almost died) qualified for the state swim meet, and my dude played a little soccer. Not that it’s been perfect.

Trust me, my basement office (now brightened by 2.1 million lamps and a cat) is not ideal and we didn’t get to be at the pool for my girl’s swim . . . but we’re making it work.

And I suspect you have too.

So maybe today we can take a sip of air together and find that we can breathe just a little better.
 
Breathing Deep
 
One of my all-time favorite rediscoveries this fall has been the power of breathing. Ancient practices like breath prayer have helped immensely. In a breath prayer you take a single mantra—like be still—and say it while breathing deeply. The mantra becomes your breath.

And another is the 4-7-8 breath. You breathe in deeply for 4 seconds, hold it for 7 seconds, and breathe out for 8 seconds. Repeat 4 times. Y’all. It’s magic. Wide awake at 3 am (like I often am)? Do the 4-7-8 breath and it resets your brain chemistry so you can sleep. You read that right. It resets your brain chemistry.

So we can relax or sleep and have the space to do other things like:
Read

I’ll admit that I’ve struggled to read, but here are some I’ve enjoyed in the last few weeks:

Flight Risk by Cara Putman. This one has a lawyer and a reporter and twisty turns of truth. Such a fun, fast read. If you want to try a snippet, here’s a link to the audio version (and y’all know I love audio books). If you like John Grisham, you’ll love Cara Putman.

London Restoration by Rachel McMillan. I’m a sucker for the historical notes in the backs of books…I think it’s one of the reasons I like historical novels so much. So imagine my joy when the historical note came FIRST! Happy sigh. And the book followed through on its historical promise with a bit of intrigue and unconventional romance (the characters are married but feel like strangers) added in. 

Or you can pick up a FREE historical read over here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/historyreads/w1h8ksra87
Writing

Of course I’m writing as much as I’m reading. At the moment, I’m working on a story in 1963 and plotting for a Christmas novella or two for the next few years. They are so much fun.

Drop me an email and tell me how are you relaxing these days?

[This was first published in my newsletter. If you’d like to subscribe, sign up here: http://eepurl.com/c7jULX.]

Celebrate Summer

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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.

Lessons from My 11-Year-Old

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I just sent out a newsletter to the folks subscribed there. In case you haven’t signed up yet, I thought you might be interested in seeing what I’m up to. So here’s just the start. You can click over to read.

My son is hilarious. He just walked up to me as I was typing away, and broke into song about the burrito cat (aka our cat Brave) and Hoppelpoppy, jumpy butt (aka our cat Hope). Excuse the slightly raucous language. He’s an eleven-year-old boy with an equivalent humor. But I mean seriously.

The knobby-kneed dude doesn’t even have to try. He is just naturally funny. And can I tell you a secret? I’m jealous.

I write historical suspense, kind of on the darkish side. There’s always hope there, but I wish I wrote funny, disarming books and short stories . . . if for no other purpose than to distract myself. But it’s not who I was made to be.

Read more here and subscribe while you’re there. The option is in the upper left corner.

Reminders & Distractions—A Short Story

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I’m deep in the midst of editing my most recent book—which occurs during the 1967 Detroit Riots. Even though it isn’t about the riots, it was a terribly difficult book to write, and is proving to be a difficult book to edit as well.

While there’s so much about this book I love, it has, at times, made me question whether I was done writing. But, as most of you know, I took a break from what I call “The Detroit Book” to write a novella and rediscovered that I actually can still write. More, I love to write.

And that has me all distracted with dreaming about the next book. For the most part, I’ve been careful not to let my mind play too much in the next world. But I sat down today intent on writing a short story for you all and ended up writing an early scene of the next book. It may never actually make it into the eventual book form. But this is how I typically start writing books.

The characters start talking to me. They demand I write a particular scene or capture a particular image for them. Then I start stringing them together into a cohesive whole.

The irony is that I wrote this short-story blog in response to the Five Minute Friday* prompt: Distracted. It was supposed to have been the character who was distracted. Instead it became an exercise in showing how I was distracted. Sigh. Please tell me I’m not the only one.

Regardless, I hope you enjoyed the taste of the book that’s forming:

________________________________

I lay still in the high grass, face toward the sun warming the tip of my nose. It had been what felt like a lifetime since the sun muscled close enough to the earth to actually put a dent in the winter air. It felt glorious despite the ominous date on the calendar—April 23, 1968—the day my life change three years back.

Somewhere in the distance a truck ground down the dirt farm roads that posed as major thoroughfares. The air breaks whooshed and released and part of me wanted to run after him, throw up a thumb and beg the trucker to take me with him. Take me anywhere but here.

Anywhere but a dusty farm town in mid-Michigan. Anywhere that didn’t bear the reminders of the life that used to be mine.

A fly landed on my fingertip and I shook it away. The house needed airing. A new border was set to arrive today. The new assistant preacher. As if our town needed another.

On Main Street a few businesses limped along the cracked pavement—the hardware, the grocery with limp vegetables for the few who didn’t grow their own, the barber shop—culminating in a corner with two church steeples. The Catholic parish with it’s attached living quarters for the priest. The Christian Reformed church with the parsonage tucked behind. Two places I could never enter again.

I pushed myself to standing and brushed the debris of my jeans. With one final deep breath, I kissed my fingertips and touched the enormous rock that served as a reminder of the death of the final child I could not save.

_____________________________________

As you all know, I absolutely adore most genres. But the ones in constant rotation have some form of historical flavor and what I call Book Club entertainment with a side of thinking. That last is obviously not an official genre you’ll find at the bookstore, but I think you know what I mean. I ran across a few other others that write this kind of mashup too and thought maybe you might enjoy some of these free books as well. I’d love for you to check them out over here: https://books.bookfunnel.com/fiction_new_books_may/r4jvdzzhqz

* If you’d like to join the Five Minute Friday community, they’re an amazing group and you can find them over here: https://fiveminutefriday.com/. Oh and the rules are: write for 5 minutes and no editing (although I can’t stop myself a little. I am an editor after all. I also took a little longer writing it because I’m a rule breaker like that).

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How Knowing the Who Beats Fear

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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/

History and Such

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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.

Walking with a Limp

Janyre4 Comments

It’s been a long while since I’ve written anything here and I’m sending it at an odd time. I hope you will forgive me. I’ve been busy writing, mind. Just not in this place where my thoughts seep out into cyberspace and collect in word pools for others to dive into.

I’ve honestly been dry, with little to pour out beyond what is necessary for family, work, and the writing of a novel.

But, like Jacob, I’ve refused to let go of God in the unfathomable wilderness of the last few years. And now, I may always walk with a limp. I know what the darkness brings. I know the questions, the doubt, and yet I choose faith, even as I question.

Even if. Even when.

Even when one moment I’m trying not to panic while my mom gets an IV—a flashback to my daughters panic.
Even when, later that day, I drive my daughter to the ER again barely a year after the last time.
Even when she is admitted again.
Even when I hold my girl down while nurses ease a tube up her nostril, down her throat for the fourth time or is it the fifth?

I will limp forward, praying for mercy.

Lord, have mercy.

And when we collapse back home, I am sick with joy, soaking in the sunshine, drawing crazy chalk animals with my son all the while wondering how it matters in the face of starving refugee children.

Lord, have mercy.

And he whispers that joy matters. It’s a gift he’s given. A tiny corner of the blessing I’ve wrestled for.

Lord, have mercy.

 

For the record, my daughter is doing better again and is back in school.

Hope Deferred

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I feel a little one-dimensional lately. I’d wanted to write something other than this. But I’ve been doing little other than take care of my sick girl.

Yesterday we drove 2 hours across the state for an early morning appointment today. It’s the third trip there in two weeks. And I’ll repeat it again next weekend for a specialized MRI.

This pic is as close as I typically get to exploring nature outside.

But I’d do it every day if that would relieve my girl’s pain. If I only could. Continue reading “Hope Deferred” →

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.