This blog started as a way to write for fun and capture thoughts, reflections, and insights that pop into my head as I interact with the people and places around me. A creative outlet to balance the writing and editing I did professionally. Shortly after starting the blog, I was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer, so the topics of my posts naturally shifted to cover that experience and help me process and cope with diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Then in August 2017, I was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer (metastatic to the liver and a vertebrae in my upper back).

Not every post is centered on cancer. There’s a whole lot more to life than that. But it is, understandably, a key theme. Many of my writings also give a nod to my faith or are entirely reflections of my faith, as my life journey as a Christian dates much farther back than my journey as a person living with cancer.

The title of my blog comes from a verse in the song “Your Grace Finds Me,” by Matt Redman, and it also reminds me of a favorite Bible verse, Romans 12:1, from the Message: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

So often, we focus on the big events in life, both good and bad. But most of our life is made up of small, routine, seemingly uneventful moments that shape our days and influence who we are becoming. My first hope is this blog will help me—and anyone who happens to read it—remember that powerful, beautiful, and extraordinary things are happening in, around, and through us in the everyday and the mundane.

My second hope for this blog is to bring a voice to the experience of living with metastatic breast cancer, which requires ongoing treatment, poses chronic symptoms and side effects, and is ultimately terminal. Sometimes my writing in this arena is intended to simply help me make sense of the changes, setbacks, and even celebrations that occurs along my treatment path. Sometimes the intent is to help friends and family (and hopefully others) better understand my experiences and know how to support me and other people they may know who are dealing with cancer or another serious illness, chronic condition, or life trial. And sometimes, it’s to express feelings that seem too difficult to verbalize in other ways.

The writings I post run the gamut, from poems to journal-like entries to quasi-fact sheets (I worked in public health communications for 25 years, so that part of me comes out here sometimes). I don’t purport to be an expert on anything medical, and nothing I write is intended as health advice. I’m just a girl making my way in this world as a daughter, wife, mother, friend, Christ follower, and person with cancer.