It never stops. It never takes a break. It never fades off my radar. It sticks to me like my skin, like humidity, like the mosquitoes and gnats and biting flies on my back patio on this late August morning. Everything I do, I do it with diabetes.

I’m tired.

If I go for a walk I go as a woman with diabetes.
It might be a long walk and I go with diabetes.
Short walk, I still go with diabetes.
Hot walk in the August air, still diabetes.
Treadmill walk in my air-conditioned home, still doing it with diabetes.
Walk with one friend, diabetes.

Walk with one friend and five dogs, still diabetes.
Walk with my students through the woods, counting each body, making sure no one is left behind? I’m still a woman with diabetes.
A walk through a zoo, weaving among the smells and calls of monkeys and macaws and hippos? Still me, still with diabetes.
Sitting on the couch for hours, reading and writing, living the sedentary student’s life? It’s me over here. And lo and behold, the diabetes is with me.

I can eat a salad, and I’m mentally weighing the carbs from the dressing (looking suspiciously at you, lemon poppyseed dressing) and I just know those cranberries, as delicious as they are, will wreak havoc on my blood sugars.
I can eat a bowl of cereal and watch my blood sugars skyrocket.
I can eat nothing at all and drink sugar-free Gatorade all day long, maybe accented by a cup of steaming chicken broth, but I’m still eyeballing my numbers while gulping colonoscopy prep and pounding down the Zofran so nothing comes back up. I’m doing colonoscopies (hello, late 40’s). With diabetes.

I am a parent, waking up at night to change the diaper of my baby. I am a parent with diabetes.
I am a gardener, reaching through late season spiderwebs to collect red fruit and I observe, feel proud, collect my treasures–and I’m a gardener with diabetes.
I was a bride in white, entirely overwhelmed and entirely joyful to meet my groom, and I did it with diabetes.
I’m a deaconess.
I’m a lay counselor.
I’m a grad student.
I’m a teacher.
I’m a director of a non-profit.
I have diabetes.

I carried my bulky purse into my college cafeteria when most girls were swinging lanyards, their hands and arms empty. I was just a kid with diabetes. I wasn’t confident.

I went to fun parties in San Francisco, balancing on heels, feeling real cute, holding the smallest clutch I could get away with. Streamlining meant one bag of Skittles, my ID, a credit card, a broken down glucose meter, and a promise from my lifelong partner-date-husband to secure sweets for me if my Skittles ran low.  Everyone else fully enjoyed the open bar. I downed Diet Pepsi after Diet Pepsi, truly no need for alcohol with my extroverted zeal empowered by everyone else having a good time. I was a diabetic at a party. Normally I’m a diabetic not at a party.

I’ve been both a camper and a camp counselor, surrounded by pines and dry air in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, absolutely wrecked by altitude sickness. Driving hours in the dark to the closest pharmacy for more of a product I’d only use when ill. My campers were so worried about me. I was worried about me. I didn’t want anyone to worry about me. Still, people who loved me were worried. I got better eventually. Diabetes was a constant.

I ate a fairly pink hamburger and lots of onion rings on a drive to a girls’ trip, resulting in some GI situation that wasn’t pretty. Diabetes was the ringer, the star of the show, the reason why we drove 20 minutes east–me with the airbnb trash can in my lap–to a teeny tiny ER for fluids. There’s a bigger story hidden within this blurb that I’m still not ready to tell, but my ever-present situation of diabetes made it all very interesting. I spent the next few days carefully eating bread, talking to God in the starry night of the Kansas prairies. I cried with my friends. I laughed with them. They loved me well.

I’ve turned down opportunities.
I’ve said yes.
I’ve denied my actual limits while enacting false limitations.
I’ve been brave.
I’ve been panicked.
I’ve been brave and panicked all at once.

The big joke for us diabetics is that we’ve all been told there will be a cure to type 1 IN FIVE YEARS. I was told this factoid in 1994 as a 16 year old. Others have been lied to as well in 2025. The hope of a cure is costly costly costly. Sometimes I hate hope. Yet I am still hopeful.

A life without diabetes clinging to my every move?

I can’t even imagine it.

I can totally imagine it.

Intense winds beat against our house last night and I woke up this morning to yet another branch down on Joe. Say it ain’t so, Joe!

Joe is our pet name for the Kentucky Coffee Tree we lovingly selected and planted in our city’s right of way. (I just googled and learned that this strip of yard has many names. Huh.) The ash borer beetle has made its way to Lincoln, Nebraska, and we didn’t want to wait for the bug to do its work. So we picked Joe as our ash replacement. But personifying a tree can have poor consequences. Just look at my heart after another storm.

Joe is quite exposed to the elements. He doesn’t have another tree nearby and he doesn’t receive shelter from our home either. For years now he has bent and twisted among the prairie winds, but the past year has seen limb after limb broken.

The linden tree to the north of us looks great.

The ornamental cherry to the south is a-okay.

But Joe appears to be following the storyline from The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein only… that’s not what we’re asking of you, Joe!

Ugh.

Our entire street was once a parade of ash trees. Apparently developers in the late ‘90s/early aughts were unconcerned with aboreal diversity. Prior to that it was most likely farmland. And prior to *that* it was what all of Nebraska was before white guys showed up. Prairie. Lots of room for wind to blow, for bison to roam, for tribes to live their more-nomadic existences.

So really, why is a Kentucky Coffee Tree even in Nebraska?

We’re a plains state! We favor plants that can survive snowstorms and ice storms and then tolerate summer droughts and sun-baked clay soils. While there is incredible diversity among prairie plants (go visit UNL’s Morrill Hall to learn more), there simply were not a lot of trees around here until fairly recently.

When we moved into our current home there were beautiful twisted river oaks out back in a culvert. I loved them from the get-go, though most have been removed now for safety reasons. Those were the type of trees originally found in low-lying spots. Kentucky Coffee Trees? Not so much.

Did the first pioneer settlers cry over broken trees?

I bet they did.

I’m in decent company, I guess.

I fell in love with tomato plants in high school. Mr. Golden’s 10th grade biology class to be specific. Ten stars to Mr. Golden and his “Alive and Satisfied” project which encouraged me to grow tomatoes by myself for the first time. My dad always grew tomatoes but this was *my* project and it was for a grade, so somewhere under grow lights off of D Hallway in Lincoln Southeast High School I tried my hand at gardening.

Did my plants produce any fruit? No idea. Did I bring them home after the semester was over? Not a clue. It was the first time, though, that my hands smelled like tomato plants and that was all it took for me to want to grow them again and again.

I am 47 years old now and coming dangerously close to being out of high school for [cough cough] 30 years. Time started moving fast about 10 years ago when our daughter went to middle school and I fully anticipate it will only speed up between now and my first steps into glory. Time is weird like that. Somehow the scent of tomato plants connects all those decades together. It hopscotches among eras and picks up memories from dad’s greenhouse in Augusta, Georgia; Mr. Golden’s warm and very alive classroom; two South 8th Street gardens with tomatoes that sounded like they came from Middle Earth; and now my home garden, planted for the first time among our perennial beds.

Cucumbers are my success story so far this season. I’ve grown them in pots for years and even though I learned something about cucumber sex–sorry, cucumber *fertilization*–with myself and a paintbrush in the role of absent pollinators, pot life was not working out for any of us. This year the death of a climbing rose fortuitously opened up a spot for a vining fruit and, voila, we’ve eaten two cucumbers already.

Math-wise, I’m not certain that my harvests are hugely profitable.

However, numbers cannot determine the quality of one’s life.

I gain copious amounts of joy by gardening. The plants are my babies and I’m obsessed with their health. I had to calm down and quit googling “furling tomato leaves” because I was so concerned with my Romas’ habits. I amended the soul multiple times and eventually told them to go with God. And you know what? There are two green Romas coming along nicely, so… okay then. The cucumbers are trying to overtake the roses, their tender vines sweetly curling around absolutely anything in their paths. And apparently the pollinators, who refused to tend to the pots on my deck, are more than happy to do the cucumber mating dance in a more reasonable location on the ground. My paintbrushes can be retained for their original purposes.

I’m completely certain that my neighbors think I’m insane as I daily, or twice or thrice daily, stand by the front garden, hands on hips, surveying my earthly domain with an admiring and critical eye. Is every home gardener constantly measuring their plants and thinking about how to clip them, divide them, shuffle them, and shift them next year? Is everyone else busting with pride that the black eye susans are finally opening up? Is anyone else wondering if Joe Pye was called a weed because it kind of looks like a weed but then again… THE POLLINATORS. Are other gardeners somewhat horrified that the spireas seem dead set on absolute world domination? Anyone else planning Bunny Soup after re-seeding their zinnias three times? No? Just me?

I buy tomatoes and cucumbers to, yes, fill our bellies. Our yields have become sauce for spaghetti and soup for grilled cheese dipping as well as chili for a burst of summer in the middle of winter. The snappy cucumbers elevate summer sandwiches and are shared with friends. But mostly I fill my arms with vegetable plants as soon as garden centers open up because it makes me happy. It keeps *me* alive and satisfied long after my time in Mr. Golden’s biology class came to a close.

Throughout my entire life Jesus has been my friend. I cannot recall one solitary day in my childhood of thinking Jesus was not for me, not loving me, or not compassionate towards me. Combine that faith in Jesus with a giant creative heap of imagination and you have a version of little Rebecca who was absolutely brokenhearted by passion plays and Good Friday services. Little Rebecca grew into adult Rebecca, but my spirit was just as crushed at such services. I still haven’t seen the Passion of the Christ movie for the same reason I choose not to watch movies with excessive violence towards enslaved Black Americans. I don’t need that in my noggin. My heart is wrenched by such scenes.

I struggle every single year with what we Christians call Holy Week. I don’t like to be forced into imagining the torture of my friend and Savior Jesus. Every year I have an internal–sometimes external–argument where I tell my pretend audience that “you can’t make me repeat all of this again.” You. cannot. make. me. And just to be real clear: we’re all pretending! I mean, this already happened and now we live with a Risen Savior at the right hand of God the Father. I’ve skipped Good Friday services in order to not give in to the deeply sad feelings. Sometimes I simply do not want to cry anymore.

This year we attended a Tenebrae Service and while I did indeed cry, I also felt grateful for the physicality of the memories of Christ’s death. We used our senses to experience dark and light, to listen to mournful music, to witness the Light of Life exiting the building. And I felt camaraderie with my Savior in the depths of despair that life holds. This deep sadness? He knew it. These heartbreaking betrayals? He was there, too. My friend Jesus, the perfect man, knew the same suffering that I know, that my friends know.

Of course the story doesn’t end there. Praise God, THE STORY DOES NOT END THERE. With freedom and perfect abandon we Christians worship a Jesus who did NOT stay dead. He was the Messiah–is the Messiah, the great deliverer–and death couldn’t hold him down. He is the perfect sacrifice and scripture says he died and rose again with our names on his heart and with our sins on his shoulders. His perfect and sinless self for my broken and sinful self. Amen.

All of this believing and remembering (and even present-day pretending during Holy Week) takes faith; I will not say otherwise. I couldn’t buy into it without that leap of faith. I’m here, existing with a faith that ebbs and flows but is always present nonetheless. I’m here, with outstretched hands, receiving daily mercies and grace that come from a Father in heaven who loves me and knows me. I’m here, rejoicing in what I don’t see but what I know deep in my heart until I see our Triune God face to face in glory.

I’m here.

The Spirit is with me.

And today that’s enough.

This week has been a doozy.

On Sunday, September 17, we said our final goodbyes to our much-beloved baby-old-man dog Shiloh. He was 14 years and 7 months old. 

Every year that we marked with him was a year I felt really blessed that he was still around. The dogs in my childhood all came to early and tragic deaths and I had sworn I’d never get a dog again because it was so painful to lose them. I remember crying into my pillow yeeeeeears after these dogs had crossed the rainbow bridge. Tears have never been hard for me to find. Alas, I grew up, got married, and then had a little girl who very badly wanted a puppy. She got one just before her 5th birthday and that was it. I was head over heels for a dog again.

Shiloh’s doggie life paired well with family life, and even now as I go back into my blog archives I can see that he was exactly the same dog through all the years. He always loved to shred tissues. He always wanted to be nearby us, a part of our pack. He loved eating all human food—including veggies, with the exception of undressed lettuce—and was never a snuggly dog. Livia marveled at a few photos of him cuddling with her on the floor of our first home and I assured her that I was very good at snapping photos quickly. He loved his kennel. He loved routine. He understood the pecking order in the house which gave him something of a respectful worship for Jeremy, a loving protective nature toward me, and a sibling relationship to Livia. With me he was equal parts sassy and adorable, and it didn’t help that I found much of his sassiness to be hilarious. I am a far cry from an efficient dog trainer. But with Jeremy’s affinity for structure our Shi was potty trained quickly and was an all-around terrific dog. His enthusiasm for greeting people at the front door was only tempered by hearing loss as he aged. He still surprised us with a few zoomies in these last years. Oh, and he loved to lick. He was a licker. Himself. Others. Obsessed. Kissed the back of Judy Schlarb’s teeth after bible study one day, and one time enjoyed slurping my mouth out when I was laughing so hard I accidentally shut my eyes. That’s not a mistake I made twice. 

This week has been the strangest week as we begin to adjust to life without our furry buddy. The tap-tap from his claws has gone silent. No little face appears in my doorway after the guys come over for D&D or Magic. There’s no heavy breathing coming around my side of the bed to see what crumbs have been dropped by the type 1 diabetic mom. No snuffling through the piles in Liv’s room, no nesting on her bed, no staring with rapt attention at the gecko. The morning shift of potty-treat-meds has been traded in for a quiet cup of coffee and time to sit. The evening shift of potty-kennel-treats is no longer necessary. The expenses of an old pup—medicines, dry and wet food, extra vet visits—have been replaced with grief take-out and grief coffees this week. The doorbell draws no barks and no front door scramble. It is quiet uptown… in a canine type of way. 

Shiloh ultimately succumbed to congestive heart failure. He lived about 15 months after the condition was diagnosed, which is fairly average I believe. I opted to medicate his little body for all of that time, but his coughing grew worse at the end of last week and his rapid and shallow breathing Sunday morning was not sustainable. I could not ask for more time with him. He had lived so well and so lovingly for so many days. There was truly nothing more to do and enjoy with Shi—we enjoyed each other so fully every day that choosing euthanasia was our final act of kindness for this furry boy who had shared his entire life with us. The emergency vet office here in Lincoln was extremely professional from my explorative phone call around noon to the moment we walked out of their clinic around three hours later. I have been afraid of having to put a pet down for my entire 45 years and in the oddest way possible it felt like a relief to have survived the weight of that event. The vet was incredible. Our boy was so very tired. He very gently and quietly experienced a final rest.

He was the best and I loved him more than words can express. 

Shiloh, we love you, bud. I will miss your perfect furry face forever. 

Thank you, God, for giving us this precious bit of fluff that brought so much joy and rhythm, hilarity and light to our days. We are grateful. We are sad, but we are grateful, too.

I’m actively posting graduation pictures of my one and only beloved (begotten?) daughter and I have near-constant flashes of school drop-offs in my head. The most challenging ones were in middle school.

So here is my gratitude list for those who helped us through every era and every episode of childrearing. 

• To those who heard me at my absolute worst, ie, when my middle schooler refused to get out of the car and go to school. Or when she refused to stand up (on E Street, at amusement parks, at the zoo–look, it happened a lot) I was HOT. I said things. Unpretty, ungracious things. You heard me and responded with love and guess what? WE DID IT. We survived. No, scratch that… WE THRIVED.
• To those who came and took my kid to school on some mornings. Okay, that was Dad. Thank you, Dad. You and mom and grandma and grandpa deserve so much more than mere words but that’s all I’ve got at present.
• To those who literally put my kid in a bathtub and bathed her. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. May your mansions in heaven be filled with every kind of delicious baked good and coffee that never runs out.
• To those who hugged my kid and loved her. To those who hugged me and loved me.
• To those who took my credit and insurance cards, those who scheduled appointments, those who dealt with canceled appointments and the rare completely-forgot–about-it appointments. Bless you. But even more to those who walked into counseling offices and counseled us, to those who walked into medical offices and gave high fives and cheered her on. You deserve all the stars in the sky for your care for us.
• To those who taught. Oh, our dear teachers. Some of you were only okay but some of you were the most stellar people on planet earth. To those who gave tough love. To those who bandaged knees and gave tylenol and provided kotex. To those who listened and reasoned and still persevered and taught new things. I see you and I am you and we needed you at every single turn for the past however many years it took to earn a high school diploma. Some of you have been around that IEP table with us for years and I thank you for your longevity and ability to really see my girl.
• To those who simply received this fabulous kid and believed in her from day one. To those who saw her light and didn’t demand she become someone else. To those who encouraged her writing and sculpting and drawing and horseback riding and love of every single animal on God’s green earth. Thank you for the opportunities you’ve given her to grow.
• To the aunts and uncles who cheered her on. Biological, adopted, and honorary. 

Memories are drifting in and out of my mind while I get ready to host a party to celebrate this moment. You are all a part of our journey and I’m grateful times a thousand for you.

Yesterday had some rough moments for sure. Rough moments in my classrooms turned into rough patches in my heart, which then turned into rough mom and wife vibes in my home, which flowed right into rough self-talk and feelings of inevitable future doom.

That rolling stone certainly gathered moss of a terrible kind. I’m still dealing with the effects of it in the daylight today, trying hard to separate truth from fears, reality from pessimism.

Despite the weight of some ick, I had four bright shiny points in my day that a little voice keeps telling me to write down. So here I go.

One. I find myself in a work position where I get to rub shoulders with someone I love very much but haven’t seen a lot in recent years. The girls who lived next door to me on South 8th—the Grand girls—are family. We did a lot of life together in those years! So yesterday when Joie and I got down to our deepest selves in a 30 Second Dance Party? Well, it connected a lot of dots and brought a lot of joy. The memory of it will always make me deeply happy. (I highly recommend teacher dancing before school to remind yourself you’re not just who these young kids think you are.)

Two. A student brought me my favorite candy and my heart exploded. In that moment I had zero idea how he knew that I loved Neccos (turns out his teacher mama told him) and all the heart emojis were floating around me in joy. Suffice to say that zero of my students had ever tasted a Necco, so later, when I broke them out and shared them it was a sweet moment. Mega warm fuzzies still.

Three. I love Lynn Locklear more than I even like most people. We’ve got a rapport that comes with years of working alongside each other in the Zion Church office, and yes, perhaps I’m using the word “working” a little loosely. Lynn says her productivity massively increased after I left, but I’d like to believe the positivity we generated in that space made all our conversations and laughter completely worth it. So while I was emailing Lynn—something that doesn’t happen that often anymore—I actually ran into her at the checkout counter of a bookstore. Total goodness.

And four. Word games are my jam. I love books. I love words. I could study etymology the rest of my life and be a happy camper. So last night as I was telling my family about an urgent GI situation mid school commute that day, we laughed ourselves silly about how I bought snacks at a gas station in order to justify my run to their restroom. “Post doo-doo Dew dues” was what we came up with and it is still making me giggle. So absurd, but how worth it to have a moment of laughing hard with my favorite people. 

Laughter scares the blues away. Joy scatters the ugliness and lets the sunshine through. Counting our blessings just makes good sense.

I know it’s okay to cry.

And still I don’t want to.

I miss my community.

God filled in the hole a teeny bit today, with a request that didn’t come from me. I felt like I had been holding my breath for two years now and today was a slight exhale.

Sometimes love looks like friends who feel like family, a warm fireplace, an orange cat, and the willingness to physically and emotionally be laid bare in front of one another. 

I keep feeling the urge to cling to what is good.

1. Friends and their fireplace

2. A pan of cinnamon rolls

3. My dog on a luggage tag

Cling to what is good.

Jeremy and I aren’t really resolution people. And we’re also not really New Year’s Eve party-ers. I was reflecting on that second truth as I got warm and cozy and drowsy under our down comforter around 10:00pm last night. 

I felt strangely guilty, like I couldn’t really rest because I was going to bed before the New Year was officially rung in. It was odd. I’ve worked tremendously hard to push off others’ expectations of life—when those expectations are not my own—and yet this one lingered. I do love celebrations and I love communal events, so maybe that’s why I felt the urge to participate at midnight. And truthfully, I semi-participated from my slumbering state. Lincolnites love any reason to set off fireworks, so as the clock hit midnight some very excited people in my neighborhood made sure we all knew what time it was. All I could do was roll over, shrug off the scary memories of my dog running off in fear a few years ago when those fireworks went off, remind myself we were all safe and sound indoors, and try to fall asleep once more. I did. The end.

Or rather, the beginning.

Today begins a new year. We resolve to serve God more wholeheartedly in 2022, to be better spouses and parents, to deeply examine our choices and behaviors to glory God more clearly. Aside from that, we have desires of course. We both want to eat healthier options, we both want to move our bodies more, we both want to be more diligent employees and more faithful friends. We are resolved, without specifically setting resolutions.

So today the snow flies and the temperatures outdoors are dangerously low. We stay inside, warmed, contented, and while we wonder what the next 12 months hold, we’re not grandiose in our plans nor overly concerned with what’s next. I suppose we’ll just carry on, one step after another, learning to love better and enjoy this world. God holds us tight, today and always.

Photo credit: Jen Hinrichs

Right before I got body slammed by a virus or two (but hey, not Covid!) I took this little sweetie shopping for some winter clothes. It was a blast.

If you’ve been reading along for years then you know that infertility is a huge, and hugely unwelcomed, part of our story. We’ve tried all manner of ways to have more kids and yet at some point had to offer a simple “thank you” to God for our beautiful only child. But as I look at Kezzie’s precious face in the image above, I rejoice that the hard reality of infertility didn’t win the day. Babies continue to be born, fostered, and adopted. I find myself wandering the aisles of Super Target delighting in picking out teeny items for them. I praise God that Alicia knew I’d love to take her daughter out shopping for some winter gear. Kids legs? I mean, they just keep stretching, don’t they? In the face of huge life changes, I’m grateful this growing kid and I got to take a little shopping trip together. She delighted in picking out hoodies in colors she loved and I delighted in watching her.

Our stories aren’t over as long as we have breath in our lungs. Medical diagnoses and setbacks don’t mean your life is forever crushed. Academic and occupational failures don’t meet you won’t ever see light again in your future. Mistakes and sins of epic proportions don’t mean redemption isn’t coming in days ahead. Buckets of negative pregnancy tests don’t get to have the final word. Each day I spend loving on my friends’ kids, and each time I kiss a boo-boo at school or help a first grader learn to sound out words, I feel the joy of grace flood over me.