I grew up scared. The Left Behind Series had caused chaos in my home and in my beliefs. Nobody had answers that held together or brought peace. After growing up like that, I couldn’t imagine trusting anyone enough to build a life with them. I also couldn’t imagine anyone taking on what I carried. So I decided it was easier to stay single.

Then Brandon came along. He saw me in my turmoil and refused to let me stay like that. I discovered I couldn’t live without him. Not just him. What he pursued. Truth. He was someone who actually pursued truth and didn’t stop until he found it. So when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I didn’t think I could live without him. Our marriage was built on that search from the beginning.

We didn’t get it right immediately. When we started trying to understand the Trinity and couldn’t find answers that were consistent with what we saw in the Bible, we stopped going to regular churches. We started looking for better answers. We found worse ones first. We accidentally landed in a home church that turned out to be a cult. Studying the Bible and the historical church honestly corrected our misconceptions. We found that the answers we needed had been in Scripture and with the Christians who had struggled with our questions throughout history. When we found what the Christians who came before us had worked through, it was like finally getting fed. I found peace I had never had. I found out what God’s joy actually feels like.

I had been working toward a geology degree before we got married. I put it on pause while we were having kids. I regularly used a field notebook, even in my private life while hiking. Becoming a geologist was a life goal that I planned to finish when the kids got to high school. The accident happened before they got to high school though.

I lost most of my memory. For a stretch I did not know who I was. I did not know who Brandon was. It was over a year before I had any memories of my children’s childhood. I was terrified that everything was in my head including God. Brandon had his own traumatic brain injury and never stopped working. He kept us afloat while our kids, who did not sign up for any of this, cooked, cleaned, and kept the house running. He is finally getting to recover nearly five years later since we are building this business. I am grateful for that.

What helped me with the emotional and physical turmoil I was going through was writing things down and going back to read them over and over again. It kept me from staying stuck on the same problem for months. It kept things real. I later realized I was using the same format I had learned in geology field studies. Record the conditions, observe, hypothesize, document results, draw conclusions. I had not designed anything. I had survived my way into a method.

Then I started noticing that God was answering my prayers in ways I could not explain away. Documented in my own handwriting. Not someone else’s testimony. Mine. My faith stopped being something I had been handed and became something I owned.

I cannot become a geologist now. My memory and my body will not cooperate. What did not get damaged was my ability to write. From seventh grade on, I was in Honors English and made good grades. I was consistently asked if I had ever considered becoming a writer. My answer never changed. Nope, I hate editing.

Brandon made a comment a while back that Love backed me into a corner and removed all my escapes. 
Ya, that feels real.
So here I am. Writing.