life by julia

“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” - Vicki Harrison A psychologist friend once told me, "It's not normal the amount of grief and loss you have experienced already for the amount of years you have lived." From babies to young mommas to grandparents to teenagers. From disease to natural causes to accidents to suicide. I have been near to it all and know that I probably haven't even faced the hardest ones for me yet. As I tend to do with life, I have taken it all in, absorbed and learned. Following are some lessons my heart has been through and the stories that accompany them.   Lesson #1: This is really hard. The first experience I had with losing someone very close to me, was my friend Shawn. He was one of the most kind, beautiful spirits I had ever met and such a good friend. When he was only 20, engaged to be married, he died from ...

For months now I have been putting off posting new blog entries because I was trying to think of a great title for a new blog about foster care and motherhood and traumatized children. I never came up with anything and decided that I should just revisit this one and post here. This first post was written in August as a message to a small group of friends. More to come... At 9:30pm 3 year olds should be fast asleep in a comfortable bed snuggled next to a blankie with a full tummy and an assurance that all is right in their world. Got a call at that time last night from the director of foster care for the county who needs an emergency placement for a 3 yr. old boy. I’ve gotten enough of these calls now to know that most likely this was a drug raid and this little boy is scared, confused, exhausted, most likely hungry and in shock. I have no words for what this does to my heart. I would take them all if I could, every last one. This past week I started helping with two kids whose mom is...

I was browsing through emails from the time I spent in Zambia in '07-'08 and found this letter that I wrote to some friends about 7 months into my stay. Thought I would share... "Yesterday, I was reminded of the reasons I am here and decided it was time for me to write about the things i have to be grateful for. Many of you know that it has been a difficult time for me here, but be assured it has been amazing as well. When i was 21 I moved to Memphis to study Physical Therapy and my youth pastor was giving me a little pep talk before I left. I have never forgotten what he said: 'It will be hard, but hard is what makes it good'. That has been so true of many seasons in my life. Last year in a time of worship at homegroup, a friend had a picture for me. He said he saw two trees, one was planted next to a stream in fields of green and the other was planted on a mountainside in the midst of rocks and cliffs. God spoke to me through that picture: 'I have cho...

Around this time last year, God was taking me through a painful process of tearing down old patterns of thinking and rebuilding the protective forces in my mind and heart. I had been walking past this wall everyday on my morning walks with Chloe(my German Shepherd) and knew that God wanted to speak to me through it. After weeks of trying to figure out what He was trying to say, one Sunday morning it came to me during a preaching. Ian(one of my pastors) was talking about how sometimes we allow enemies(thoughts/temptations) to come over the walls of our minds without any check. Immediately I knew God was saying to me that the mechanism for protecting my mind was faulty. I had seen this wall with those ornate holes where things can get in and out. Immediately when he said that I knew that God was showing me a picture of my mind by taking me past this wall. At first I thought, 'Ok, that's easy, we'll just fill in the holes'. About the time I thought that, a good fri...

the past two years have been a bit of a drought with my writing... motivation and inspiration. recently i have become inspired again, so i am digging back into the journals that i did manage to press out over that difficult time and will be sharing some of that here. straight from my journal... January 17th, 2009 been pondering weakness... our weakness... human weakness. it doesn't seem that our society allows for a person to be weak. it seems that particularly in the Church, one is expected to pull it together and keep moving forward. had a thought yesterday - even warriors break down sometimes, even they need rest and refreshment and restoration. the bottom line is time. healing takes time. broken bones need time to set before being used in the way they once were. things break us at times. my dad broke his collar bone when he was a kid and he was so terrified to tell his father that he just left it that way. the bone didn't heal correctly, so one shoulder sits lower...

Many of you may remember Munwato's story from my blogs while I was in Zambia. She was five, HIV+, and had lost both of her parents to AIDS. Her grandmother had been caring for her until she was hit by a car and killed while she was carrying Munwato on her back. If you had met Munwato, you never would have known that she was fighting a deadly disease or that she had been left by all those who cared for her. She was so happy and full of life. The first time I met her, she came running to me and jumped in my arms as if she had known me her whole life. Whenever I was in Muzoka, she was glued to my side. On November 24th, 2008, Munwato went to be with Jesus. "Zambia...has one of the world’s most devastating HIV and AIDS epidemics. More than one in every seven adults in Zambia is living with HIV and life expectancy at birth has fallen to just 42 years. This has compounded Zambia’s existing economic problems. In four decades of independence, Zambia has found peace but not pr...