It’s been a while since I’ve been here. Gosh, I guess my last post was in December of 2020. So much life has happened since then, for every single person on the planet.

But tonight, is one night in a string of many, that I’ve been taken aback. When Reagan had her crisis over eight years ago, I used to rock her to sleep while she was fed by a g-tube. And Rob would read the Bible to us. We’d fall asleep over the course of 25-30 minutes, depending on how much we had to feed her. Rob got through all of Psalms, Proverbs, all the Gospels, I feel like we got pretty deep into the New Testament before we didn’t need to feed her like that at night. I’m guessing we did this for a year give or take a couple months.

I love, love, love how much we shared when things were so difficult. I love that we documented our valley as much as we could. I love that we took pictures and that this blog has been poured into for nine years. I know one reason is so that God would use our story to impact others. I can’t believe it’s our story and that we’ve traveled so far to get to this amazing mountain top.

Reagan is talking more than ever, and she’s hilarious. And she loves Jesus so much! And she is so excited to read the Psalms with us before bed. She picked up her big girl Bible today and started reading Psalms on her own. There is no telling how deep her roots will go given that everything happened to her. As her parents, our experience going through her metabolic crisis is way different than her experience, just like it’s different for people who have watched, or who have been nannies in our family. Her life, her restoration, it is literally God himself reaching down, redeeming every nook and cranny of our lives. Ours. And hers.

Tonight, Rob read Psalm 6 and Reagan is so eager to listen. As I sat in her teeny bopper chair in the corner of her room, the same corner that I rocked her in, the scenes from eight years ago flashed through my mind, and the words of these Psalms hit me in the chest, hard. God remembers and he heard every single prayer, and held every single one of my tears. When people question whether God is real…I just would love to tell them our story. He’s as real as the air we all breathe and the sun we all watch rise. He’s as bright as the moon on the darkest night of your life. Always loving us, even when it doesn’t look like it. The valley was worth it to get to the view of this mountain top.

I hope the words of Psalm 6 can encourage you. I put them in The Message version below, because I think they are so relatable.

xoxo
AM

^1-2 Please, God, no more yelling,
    no more trips to the woodshed.
Treat me nice for a change;
    I’m so starved for affection.

^2-3 Can’t you see I’m black-and-blue,
    beaten up badly in bones and soul?
God, how long will it take
    for you to let up?

^4-5 Break in, God, and break up this fight;
    if you love me at all, get me out of here.
I’m no good to you dead, am I?
    I can’t sing in your choir if I’m buried in some tomb!

^6-7 I’m tired of all this—so tired. My bed
    has been floating forty days and nights
On the flood of my tears.
    My mattress is soaked, soggy with tears.
The sockets of my eyes are black holes;
    nearly blind, I squint and grope.

^8-9 Get out of here, you Devil’s crew:
    at last God has heard my sobs.
My requests have all been granted,
    my prayers are answered.

¹⁰ Cowards, my enemies disappear.
Disgraced, they turn tail and run.