Beautifully Broke
A story of hope for the hurting and broken
Hello, World!
My name is Hope and I would like to welcome you into my world. I’ve lived my whole life with chronic pain and was recently diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I will explain more about this and how it has shaped my life as I go. What my goal is for this blog is that you will find some joy, hope, and peace as you come with me on my journey through life. I want you to know that what ever has or is causing you pain in your life that you are not alone. This life is hard and if we are going to get through it we need each other and we need God. Please join me, I’d love to have you along for the ride.
Romans 5:3-5 “And not only that, but we glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character, and character hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Blog
Hope
I was talking to my brother the other day and two words slipped out of my mouth that I didn’t even realize I felt. It sparked a good conversation, but they’ve been echoing through my head ever since. Hope hurts. I’ve been battling health issues off and on my whole life but consistently for the…
Transparency
I was recently talking with a lady whose life was falling apart. As we sat there, I listened to the hopelessness in her voice, and it became apparent that she was not a believer. I tried sharing with her how Christ had always been there for me, even in the darkest of days He’d never…
Eyes Forward
I had a dream the other night. I don’t remember any of it other than I was perusing titles of books, one title caught my eye “Looking Ass Forwards.” When I woke up this is all I could remember. After a long night with very little sleep, I was disturbed to say the least. I…
Valentines
Since it is February, I feel like everyone is talking about love right now, so I decided to jump in too. After all, Valetines is the anniversary of our first date. There was a Valentine’s banquet at my church that he took me to. I guess my folks figured that it was a safe bet for a first date. The following day he went sledding with my family and me. Then we came back to my house for dinner and a movie with my family. During the movie he leaned over and whispered, “I want to tell you something, but…
Perfect Love
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” This is one of my favorite verses but to be honest, it’s always bothered me. I loved the idea of it, but what does fear and love have to do with each other? What exactly does perfect love look like and how can love cast out fear? Megan recently had me watch a movie called Luca. I wasn’t really excited to watch it, but since my migraines had confined me to the couch, I decided to take advantage of the situation. Plus, it made a good excuse to…
Questions
The other night I was relaxing on the couch when I heard things crashing down and my daughter’s cries of distress. The sight that greeted me as I walked into the kitchen was not a pretty one. Megan was standing in front of an open fridge that was now baptized in my coffee. She looked at me and I realized that she was holding a now half full cup of my coffee. Not exactly sure how it all went down but somehow my coffee did a “front flip out of the fridge”. All the years of softball paid off and she…
Darkness and Light
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 I had my first migraine in the spring of 2012. It came out of nowhere and hit me like Wiley Coyote’s anvil. Until we moved to Alabama, I had what they diagnosed as daily persistent headaches with chronic migraines. In other words, headaches all day every day with 1-3 migraines a week. The first thing you learn when you get migraines is that darkness is your friend. One day…
Gratitude
One of my friends has a pet peeve I’ve decided to adopt, and I would like to introduce y’all to it. It’s called a gratitude band aid. Let me give you an example. As you’re carving the turkey this week, you accidentally cut off your finger. You reply, “That’s ok, I’m grateful I still have the other nine!” For reals right now?! You scream and yell and morn the fact that you are now a finger shy of a full load. Are you grateful you still have the other nine? Yes, but that doesn’t solve the fact you just cut…
Truth in Love
Our pastor a few years back taught on Ephesians 4:15. It discusses how when we correct each other the truth needs to be spoken in love. With the desire to restore and support the other person. It’s not from a “holier than thou” position, but to come alongside and uphold and help them. Recently I’ve started realizing it’s so much more than that. One of the things I tell my kids is I want brutal honesty from them. What I mean by this is I don’t want them telling me what I want to hear. What they think will…
Peace
There are times God answers prayers so quickly that we are left standing in awe. Then other times we beg for answers and feel like we are met with empty silence. One night recently I woke up unable to move my left arm. Figuring I slept on it wrong and there was just a lack of circulation I continued to try to move it with no success. I woke up my husband and informed him I couldn’t move it. He started moving it for me and massaging it trying to help get the circulation going again. After a few minutes,…
Feels
I was talking to my younger brother the other day and he said, “Man, that hit me right in the feels!” I realized I must be getting old because I had no idea what he was talking about. I guess it’s the new hip way to say that it made you emotional, or that it hit you in the heart. I honestly thought that it was a stupid saying. The more I thought about it though the more accurate I found it. There are times we have feelings that we can’t even describe at first. We look around at what’s…
Life from Death
My brother recently said something along the lines of, “In our lives we experience many deaths, the death of a dream, the death of a loved one, the death of our youth and our health. We may mourn each of these deaths in our lives but we have to remember that God always seeks to bring resurrection and new life from every death. This isn’t always in the way that we would hope or imagine, but there is always resurrection and new life waiting for us on the other side of death.” Death is not something we enjoy thinking about. But…
Doubt
“Doubt is not the opposite of faith, sight is.” Our pastor said this a few weeks ago and I’ve been thinking about it since then. I agree that sight is the opposite of faith. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1 But if doubt isn’t the opposite of faith like I’ve always assumed, then what is it? Now I’m a chronic doubter, so the idea that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith is very comforting. I started looking for when doubt is mentioned in the Bible and the majority of the…
Blessings
Someone recently asked me, “What does God want for you?” Having gone to church my whole life and having had a personal relationship with Christ for over 30 years, I was embarrassed to realize I didn’t have an answer. I sat there like a deer in the headlights. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with an answer, but I was drawing blanks. Ask me what God wants from me and I’ve got that covered. He wants my trust, my love, my life, my obedience…but for me? After a long awkward pause, I think she realized I wasn’t…
Broke
I recently had a reader comment about how the title of my page should read “Beautifully Broken” vs broke. She stated that broke makes it sound like I’m without money. Vocabulary is not my strong suite, so I was embarrassed to have made such a big mistake. Broken was the word I wanted to use but that domain was taken so I settled for broke. I looked up the word broke to verify the meaning and the first definition that came up was, bankrupt, lacking funds, destitute. I quickly changed my title page and thanked her for pointing out my…
The Body
As someone who lives with chronic pain I’ve found myself asking many times, why pain? When I was younger my mom read us a book called “The Gift of Pain.” This was over twenty-five years ago so the details may be fuzzy but I remember being fascinated. The doctor who wrote the book discussed his work with individuals who deal with leprosy in a third world country. All I knew about leprosy was that it was something in the Bible that made you unclean. He stated that part of leprosy was nerve damage which causes a loss of sensation, mostly…
Purpose
I’m proud to be an American and a Christian. That being said, I think because of living in the US some of the lines between Christian and American philosophies get blurred. I’m afraid that we as Christians have unwittingly accepted some American ideologies and weaved them into our foundational believe system. The American dream is that you can be anything you want to be. Follow your heart and do what makes you happy. The Declaration of Independence itself declares this is what America is about, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they…
Darkness
Darkness seems to surround us like a heavy blanket. It seems to be the constant, ever present shadow that hangs over us. Seems like everyone I talk to is in the fight of their life. Two of my closest friends have family members that are suicidal and fighting major mental and emotional issues. One of my daughter’s friends has a brother that’s battling the same thing. As my loved ones try to stand in the gap and come alongside their hurting family members, they’ve reached out to me. They need someone to talk to, to pray with them, to help…
Sadness and Joy
“So lay down your burdens, lay down your shame. All who are broken lift up your face. Oh, wanderer, come home. You’re not too far. So lay down your hurt, lay down your heart. Come as you are.” ~ Come As Your Are by Crowder As I sit here this morning drinking coffee, I find myself surrounded by Christmas decor and with it the joy of the season. Yet I keep encountering pockets of loss and sorrow mixed into the joy. This song came on by Crowder and I felt like it was speaking directly to me. “So lay down…
Calm
After a big storm there’s an eerie calm that settles over everything like a comforting blanket. It feels almost dream-like. It goes from chaos, pounding rain, roaring wind, darkness, and being trapped inside the house, to stepping out to feel the warmth of the sun on your face, and complete silence. The crickets, cicadas, frogs, and birds don’t dare break this brief moment of complete peace. Pretty soon you begin to hear the song of a bird here or there. A gentle breeze begins to blow and the frogs, cicadas and crickets aren’t far behind. The squirrels resume their acrobatics…
Memories
Memories are interesting. When our son was 16 we convinced to go see a counselor. His best friend was the one who sexually molested our daughter and he was dealing with guilt and shame and had started vaping to cope. My husband and I went with him for the first session. The counselor started with normal counseling jargon, to be honest I checked out pretty quick. I was currently taking our daughter, Faith, to a different counselor and sitting with her every session as she went through EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy. I’ll get into that more in…
Guilt
It’s amazing how long the memory of pain can stay with you. I had just dropped my son, Justice, off at a baseball game for pre-game warm ups, when Faith said, ”Silly brother, he just fell off the fence!” I pulled the car back into the parking place and told my daughter to sit and the car and wait for me while I went to check on him. What I found out was the gate to the field was locked, so he and the rest of the team were climbing the 6 foot chain link fence in their cleats. Justice’s…
Self-Reliance
So, my husband has been gone now for almost 2 months, or 8 weeks, or 56 days or 1,344 hours….you get the point. It’s been a long time. He had to leave for work and was only supposed to be gone 3-4 weeks but nothing went according to plan, so here I sit counting done the hours till he comes home. I want to pause really quick here and give a shout out to our military. All the families that are separated due to deployments, I got a small glimpse of what that feels like. THANK YOU!!! I’ve learned a…
Disturbance
I’ve learned that watching the weather in the South is similar to watching a soap opera. Entering from stage south we have tropical disturbance 99 but little does it know it’s coming into a very hostile atmospheric situation, causing little more than some cloudy skies and some minor rain fall. But wait, what’s this? Isabel over Cuba is becoming very organized, look how beautiful her eye is (she lost the other eye in a cat fight) so clear and concise! And she’s got nothing but warm inviting waters ahead of her with no wind shear to slow her down. It…
Pause….continued
There’s times in life where we ask God why and are met with nothing but silence. On occasion He decides to graciously lift the vail and reveal just a hint of what He’s accomplishing behind the scenes. I don’t know if I can do this story justice but I have to share the miracle that I just got to witness. Let me set the stage. In my last post I told y’all that there was an issue with my mammogram and I had to go have more tests run. I found out the there was an asymmetry and they needed…
Pause
As I was sitting here praying about what to write, I received a phone call from the doctor. I just had my first mammogram this week and let me tell you something, those things hurt!!! I’d heard that they were uncomfortable but as my knees buckled from the pain and I was suspended by only my extremely squished boob, uncomfortable wasn’t the word that came to mind. As I was trying to catch my breath after the first image was taken the radiologist said, “You have extremely dense breast tissue, but I’m sure you know that.” All I could manage…
The Future
I can’t believe summer is almost over already! Less than three weeks before school is back in full swing. And to be honest I’m not sure if I’m dreading it or looking forward to the routine again. I think the future always holds a little bit of a bitter sweet appeal to it. I’m grateful for the extra time with my daughter and husband, and all the slower more relaxed moments. I’m looking forward to seeing what this next year is going to bring her and what my life holds for me. The future for some I found out is…
God is Bigger
I stumbled across something in the book of Job the other day that left me in awe. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this story it goes something like this… Satan comes before God and innocently states he’s been out roaming the earth, yet we all know “the devil walks about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter5:8b) Unprompted God asks him if he’s considered His servant Job. At this point you’d assume Job has royally messed up and God is using Satan as His attack dog, yet the very next words out of…
Cost
This week we took a mini vacation to the beach. I sent these photos to some of my family and friends while I was soaking up the rays and enjoying God’s creation. The responses I got ranged from, “so happy for you” to “I hate you.” Of course the “I hate you” was from my friend that was stuck at work and was meant in the nicest of ways. It made me realize how most of the times we don’t know the cost behind the highlights we see in people’s lives. I didn’t tell them that the 2.5 hour drive…
Fear
A pastor once said that fear stands for Fake Evidence Appearing Real. Ten days ago my husband and I were rear-ended. My husband had a stiff neck and headaches off and on for awhile but seems to be back to normal. Unfortunately, due to my genetic disorder I don’t bounce back quite as well. The first time we were rear-ended four years ago I ended up having to get my back fused due to a ruptured disc. The fear set in right after we were hit and has been slowly eating away at me. Now as my sciatic nerve has…
Answers
Back in 2012 I got my first migraine. We were on our way to Disneyland with our kids and out of the blue I was blindsided by a migraine. From that time on I began having what they finally diagnosed as daily persistent headaches with migraines. I had been in and out of the doctor’s office up to this time, but this began years of being ping-ponged back and forth between doctors and specialist. Each one would discover something they thought was causing the issue, or a “new” issue and quickly pass me off to a new doctor. For example,…
Vulnerability
I don’t know about you but I’m not a huge fan of vulnerability. My brother encouraged me to read the book “Daring Greatly” which is all about how to be vulnerable and why it’s important. Don’t ask me why but I’ve started reading it. It’s good but has been very challenging. You might think that because I put it all out here on the blog that I’m a very open person, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is a very safe place for me, for the most part no one knows me here so it’s way easier to…
Parenthood
My sister-in-law and her three kids are here visiting this week. As I watch her with her 2, 5, and 7 year old it made me wonder, what is the hardest stage of parenting? I have an almost 15 year old and a 20 year old so I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum as she is. It was a beautiful sunny day so we all decided to go to the beach yesterday. Usually when we go my daughter and I pack some snacks and drinks, then go get dressed, meet on the back patio to help each other…
Emotions
I grew up in a family of seven kids. I have two older biological brothers and four adopted siblings. I was seven when my family grew immediately with the adoption of three children from Korea, 2 girls and a boy. That story needs it’s own day, but to put it simply they had been through hell and brought a lot of emotional baggage with them, understandably so. The damage from all they had been through brought chaos and confusion to our home life and turned it into one gigantic emotional roller coaster ride. Therefore I realized emotions were a bad…
Depression and Anxiety
If you have ever battled depression and anxiety, you know they are worthy foes. I recently saw this description of them ~ Depression is when you don’t really care about anything. Anxiety is when you care too much about everything. And having both is just like hell. In a previous post I told y’all I have a genetic condition called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). EDS has a huge family tree with all sorts tag-a-long diagnosis, two of them are depression and anxiety. These twin devils like to reek havoc on your brain and emotions while EDS is pummeling your body. They’ve…
Is God good?
A friend recently posed this question to me, “Why do you believe that God is still good after all you have been through?” I would say the bigger question for me is, do I really believe God is good? I believe in God, that He’s loving and all powerful, merciful, just, caring…but good? Why is that so hard for me to grasp. There was a song that came out when I was going through a hard time called “Good, Good Father”. I couldn’t even sing the words, because in my heart if He was a good Father He wouldn’t have…
Faith
Before we got married Daniel and I decided that we wanted to wait 3-5 years before we had kids and then have 3-4 about 2-3 years apart, and then God laughed. As I’ve mentioned our first child was born a mere 18 months after we got married. When our son was almost two I figured it was time to start trying for our second. I don’t know if you have moments in time that are forever frozen in history for you, but this is one of mine. I was walking out of our home office and getting ready to head…
Struggles
I’ve realized that a lot of times when I’m trying to make sense out of situations in my life writing it down helps me unscramble all the pieces. So, welcome to my therapy session! Some areas in my life that I’ve struggled to find balance and direction with are trials, tribulations and discipline. At first glance they may all seem the same but I think there’s some very big differences. Trials ~ I used to look at trials and tribulations as the same thing but in the Bible the word trial is translated as temptation or testing. 1 Peter 1:6…
Invisible
When I was little I tried desperately to not be noticed because if I was noticed I might get in trouble, or even worse I might get pointed out as an example of how to be the “perfect” child making me an enemy to all. So I made a career out of being invisible thinking this would bring me happiness, or at least peace. As I hit the wonderful adolescent years the normal fear of looking like an idiot was added to my list of pros to being invisible. Part of being invisible was the ability to morph into what…
Scars
A friend shared a post with me yesterday that was really good and encouraging. Along with that post the above picture was shown. Immediately I fell in love with it. My friend stated that the photo reminded her of my post where I mentioned my daughter telling me not to hide my scars. I was honored. I don’t know why I’d be excited that a picture of a women battered and bloody in armor would remind her of me. Maybe it’s because as a child I was always known as the weak and sickly one. I liked to imagine myself…
Perspective
I was thinking this morning about perspective. When taking photos you can make the viewer see what you want them to. When buying something online people are really good at making the product look amazing. For example I bought a pair of decorative columns the other day off the marketplace and had to drive a half hour to get them. Daniel had asked me before I committed to buying them how tall they were. I said based on the picture of them standing in a doorway probably over four feet. I got there and found out they are about two…
Even if…
“How do you live with pain all the time?” This is the question that was recently voiced to me and has been asked in many different forms and variations over the years, and I usually brush it off with my typical, it’s no big deal, I can handle it, it’s a blessing in disguise. But all night I couldn’t stop thinking about my answer. This is what I wanted to say. Pain sucks. Being in pain 24/7 is exhausting, mentally and physically exhausting. You literally get to the point on some days where you are functioning on auto pilot and…
Broken
I don’t know how many times in my life I thought I’ve dealt with something only to have it raise its ugly head years later. I’m starting to realize that we don’t always understand the extent of the damage done at the moment of impact. For example, we recently experienced hurricane Sally. It was a strong cat 2 and moved at the painstaking speed of 2 mph and dumped 18inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Fences were knocked down, trees uprooted, roofing was removed, and the landscape was flooded. We went out the next morning to assess the…
Storms
Early on in my marriage God tried to teach me an important lesson that I feel like I’m still in the process of grasping. I mentioned earlier that I had a lumpectomy, here’s that story. In December, five months after we were married I found a mass in my breast. Since I’m a proud card carrying member of the itty bitty titty committee the size of the mass made it impossible to miss. When I first went into the doctor she was very dismissive and told me that I just didn’t know what a breast was supposed to feel like…
Choices
Have you ever had times were you think you’re making a good decision and then years later you look back and realize that it was God’s direction and perfect plan being worked out and you were just going along for the ride? That’s what happened when I met my husband Daniel. I thought I had found a good guy. He was a believer and everyone approved and I loved him to what capacity I was able to. The way we met and our whirlwind courtship is a whole other story, but the short version is we met in December, started…
Ehlers-Danlos
There are so many out there like me that suffer from chronic pain and have fought through and may still be fighting through diagnosis’s and doctors not believing them. This is why I’m sharing my story, to let you know you are not alone and to give you hope to keep fighting. I wanted to explain about my genetic disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). Since this is the only body I’ve ever had (I know, shocking) I assumed that everything I was going through was normal. I would like you to know the basics because a lot of what I’m…
Hulk Smash
How do you sum up forty years of life? What do you include and leave out? You might say just tell us the highlights. In reality the mundane day to day life is what taught me the biggest lessons. We’ve all read about people who have had that aha moment. They have fallen on their face sobbing before God begging and pleading for answers and were rewarded with clarity and direction. Like a light had been turned on and they knew why and what they were supposed to do. That’s not my story. Don’t get me wrong, there have been…
Introduction
Have you ever tried to grasp reality only to realize its ever changing? Like trying to chase a mirage, the closer you think you’re getting to reality the more it changes. There have been so many times in my life where my reality has been changed, challenged, and completely uprooted. I don’t handle change very well. Sometimes I forget how much I hate it and I beg for change and then fight against it when it happens and find myself grasping at the way things were because they were at least known. Sometimes I try to go back, see if…
Beautifully Broken 