Well, it's been two and a half years since I've allowed my fingers and keyboard to meet in this space.
I've had a growing desire to write here as my twenties are coming to a close. If you don't want to read about my last decade of life, now's the time to exit this tab on your computer and watch Netflix instead. Really, I'm going to ramble about ten years worth of events. Don't say I didn't warn you.
The majority of older friends in my life rave about their thirties. I'm truly not dreading adding years, wrinkles, and gray hairs to my life. Aging does not scare me. However, I do find myself grieving the end of a season that was incredibly significant in many, many ways.
When I think back to my twenty year old self, I can't help but smile at all the hope, heartache, dreams, uncertainty, and free time I experienced. That year was filled with late night runs around campus, countless conversations on porches with friends, and continually asking the Lord for what was next. This was the year I decided I would attend cosmetology school after college as a stepping stone for opening a trade school for women reintegrating into society after being rescued from sex trafficking... whew, that's a mouthful. I had a plan. It felt good and sounded right.
Then I met Otha.
There was something about him - I now know it was his Enneagram 8-ness ;) - that drew me to him in a way that caught me off-guard. Our relationship felt so unlikely to happen since we met in March and he was planning on moving to Rwanda in June and then to Morocco in August for a two year teaching job. He told me in an email as we were getting to know each other that if we were supposed to be together God would move mountains. Boom. God did. His Rwanda trip was cancelled by the organization he was going to be working with and that cute guy moved to College Station to give us a chance. I fell in love. To my disbelief, he still boarded a plane in August to head to Morocco for his teaching job. International long-distance dating is not for the faint of heart and I was ready to throw in the towel after a few months. Luckily, his experience in Morocco was less than ideal in 1,000 ways and he decided to move back that Christmas and propose.
At 21 years old (aka an absolute baby), I graduated college and got married. A few months into marriage, right after I turned twenty-two, we found out we were pregnant. This was completely unexpected, unplanned, and happened on the way home from an adoption conference. Since I was so mature at that age *eye roll* I took a pregnancy test during my lunch break without telling Otha. Seeing the double lines, I freaking lost my mind and sprinted shoe-less down the street to my mentor, Staci's house with the pee stick in my hand. Of course, her husband answered the door instead of her while he was having a meeting and there I was holding a freshly peed on pregnancy test blubbering nonsense through tears. They were so gracious in my madness and now I can't think about that moment without laughing.
Asher Isaiah Graham joined our family in 2011 and rocked our world. There are so many details I'm leaving out like how our marriage was so incredibly challenging for me that first year... or how we moved to Austin right after we said "I do." and the Lord brought us right back to Bryan/College Station (B/CS) knowing we would need a special community to walk us through the next four years.
Something that marks those first few years of our marriage was living with other people. If you've never lived with another family or had a friend live with you, I highly recommend it. The first three months of marriage we lived with two different families who graciously opened their home to us as we navigated our lives as newlyweds looking for jobs. In our two room apartment, my dear friend Lisa lived with us during my pregnancy and the first few months of Asher's life. What kind of friend lives with a newborn in a tiny apartment? The best kind. Right after Lisa moved out, our friend Adam moved in because his current living situation had literally caught on fire. We were so grateful for this time with him since he was dating one of my best friends and had the chance to really get to know him more like family. He moved out when he and Juliette got married and shortly after, we purchased out first home. Our friends, the Marions, who had lived in the apartment right under ours decided to live with us in our house while they were back and forth between Ghana and College Station. There were four adults and one baby with a tiny bathroom and we totally made it work. We also had a garage apartment that Lisa and our friend, Michelle, moved into and transformed into a beautiful, welcoming home. So then there were six adults and a baby living together... and a bunch of chickens roaming around the backyard. As a new mom, having that many people around every day was such a gift.
When I was twenty-three, we completed our paperwork and training to become certified as foster parents. Looking back, I can't believe we were so young when we took the leap of faith when Asher was still a baby. Malia arrived at our doorstep literally the day after our certification was complete. Her name at the time was Cathy and she had been born at thirty-two weeks and spent a few weeks in the NICU before coming to our home.
I honestly had no idea the wild ride we were about to take the next year and a half.
Without going into every single detail, Malia's body was really sick but no one knew the extent of it when CPS dropped her off at our house. I took her to the doctor over and over and over again, knowing that something was not right. We were also told multiple times by CPS that she would be placed with her half-siblings who were in a different foster home. The first time we packed her bags for CPS to pick her up the next day to re-locate her, I remember crying in Lisa and Michelle's kitchen, feeling silly for crying because this is what we signed up for. Malia's body shut down that night and I'm not being dramatic when I say that if we had not taken her to the ER, she would have died. Instead of CPS coming the next morning, I was sitting in the PICU in Houston with Malia while she was hooked up to every machine possible. This was the first of many hospital stays.
Over the next year and a half, doctors in Houston would continually discover new things about her body that made it difficult for her to thrive. She spent months completely sedated on a breathing vent. I spent that time sitting next to her seemingly life-less body passing minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months in and out of depression and watching Grey's Anatomy - really, I watched every single episode. Our friends selflessly watched Asher in B/CS while Otha was at work, brought them meals, and drove to Houston to visit me and Malia. The Herringtons gave us a free place to stay close to the hospital in Houston and we are forever grateful for their hospitality and generosity. I can't think about that season of life without feeling completely overwhelmed by how well we were loved by our community. They rallied around us in a "we're in this with you for the long-haul" kind of way.
Malia's health began to improve and we settled into a rhythm at home with six-eight therapies a week, using oxygen tanks, administering twelve different medications multiple times a day, limiting the number of visitors we had in our home and not letting others hold her because of the risk of germs. I was at a follow-up appointment for her in Houston on her first birthday when I got the call from the CPS worker that Malia's biological parents' rights were being terminated. I sobbed. I wrote about this years ago, but I was truly grieving the loss of the relationship between Malia and her parents. They would miss out on her incredible life and she would miss out on theirs.
We finalized Malia's adoption on May 14th, 2014. Then we packed up our house and moved to Fort Worth a few weeks later to be closer to my parents and a children's hospital for Malia.
Leaving B/CS was heartbreaking for me. We lived within walking distance to most of our closest friends and truly did life together. We made meals for each other every week, met as a small group, had progressive dinners and parties, prayed together, took after-dinner walks to each others' houses, raised babies together, meal prepped in each others' kitchens, folded each others' laundry, celebrated and grieved together. I hope I never take for granted what a rich, life-giving time that was for me.
The second half of my twenties has been spent settling into a new life in Fort Worth.
Living ten minutes away from Cook Children's Hospital and so close to my parents has been a game changer for us. Malia's hospital admissions feel more manageable and appointments feel like a breeze. That alone has made the move here worth it.
FIT4MOM has played a huge role in our life in Fort Worth. It's been a crazy roller coaster of God's provision from the very beginning when I won a 10 Class Pass at a Grand Opening in B/CS in 2012 to this very day. A year after we moved to Fort Worth, my friend Anna passed along the Fort Worth franchise to me. I put on the hat of a business owner just a few weeks before Ezra joined our family. Honestly, I'm grateful that those two big changes happened at the same time. I learned how to be a mom of three kids and how to keep a business afloat together as one transition. Whenever I feel like I'm failing as a business owner, I remind myself that my business skills are the same age as Ezra... so I'm basically a toddler in the business world and give myself grace. When I feel like I'm failing as a mom, I just pray my kids find a fantastic counselor to talk through their childhood trauma with one day. ;) We're all doing the best we can, amiright?
Maybe it's from devouring all of Dr. Brene Brown's work, digging deep into the Enneagram, meeting with a Life Coach, moving away from a tight-knit community, or simply approaching my thirty's, the past few years have turned me inside out and upside down. I have doubted myself more since moving to Fort Worth than any other season in my life. I've been deconstructing thought patterns and stories I've told myself about other people's perception of me and let me tell you, it's a painful process and so freeing. And I'm ready for more. I crave growth and am willing to fight through the discomfort of facing my blind spots, weaknesses, and sin. I'm feeling ready to move forward into the next decade, shedding my paralyzing tendencies of people-pleasing and limiting beliefs about my worth and potential.
Between graduating, marriage, three kids, moving, and owning a business, my twenties were filled with incredible memories and the sweetest relationships. I've seen God's provision over and over again in our life, moving mountains and increasing our faith. Although I'm not running a cosmetology school for women rescued from sex trafficking like I envisioned at age 20, I wouldn't trade my current life for anything. I dare to say that God's plan was and is better than mine.
May this song be my anthem of the next decade.
"I will climb this mountain with my hands wide open." Amen.
