Grateful For A Landscape of Scars

I've written a lot this month about gratitude and thankfulness—partly because it's November and Thanksgiving is a perfect time to refocus on life lessons and little blessings, but also because resilience and emotional healing have always been the greatest focus points of my brand.

As a Christian, I was taught that the greatest purpose and potential of my life is in using my personal testimony to showcase God's redemption, and when I introduce people to Jesus, I don't do it as a preacher; I do it as one friend inviting another to share something beautiful. As a mother, learning how to break toxic cycles helped me see survival as a gift; motherhood showed me there is beauty in brokenness. And as a student leader, trusted with guiding others forward in their spiritual growth, I've seen countless confirmations of how lived experience matters—because overcoming hardship is fine on its own, but when you find purpose in pain and take time to unfold the map of your story, your experience becomes a guide through someone else's emotional landscape of scars.

Writers are often told to "write what you know." To use knowledge and authenticity as tools, to draw characters and sculpt storylines from emotional truths. To mold the roads of our own experience into the mountains and valleys of unknown worlds, because the lessons we learn and the storms we survive aren't just for us.

Every mountain climbed and every emotional river rapid navigated becomes part of who we are, each experience a landmark on a lifemap drawn in the scars that tell our stories.

So as November winds down and we move from Thanksgiving to Christmas gift-giving, I've been thinking about how easily our everyday gratitude for survival might become the survival guide we gift to those around us—because the best thing about stories is, they're meant to be shared.

Everyone who knows me knows that I hate waking up in the morning. Every day is a riot of things to do: problems to solve, appointments to show up for, tasks to complete. Every night is a late one: dragging myself through brain fog and fatigue in the effort to finish each day, desperately fighting the fear of starting the next day already behind. And every morning starts too early.

Quiet moments are hard to come by, even with extensive effort. I receive somewhere around 300 texts and notifications every day, 50-100 emails, and rarely less than 5 phone calls—my phone would ding itself to death if it wasn't always set on Silent. The washer always seems to be churning, the dryer always seems to be humming, and my car always has something rattling around that shouldn't be.

My personal circle of friends is loud and energetic. We update each other on everything, share Tiktoks and video shorts like there's no tomorrow, offer each other tips and advice, openly broadcast our pain, our problems, and our prayers. My kids are like tornadoes, complete with gale force energy, unpredictable shifts in tone or location, and yes, the occasional bout of devastating wreckage.

But most mornings, my youngest daughter and I chat easily on the ride to school, and every conversation I share with her is a waterfall of gratitude on the map of my existence. Autism might have made these conversations impossible...but it didn't. She's sixteen years old, and every day of her life has been a fragile gift—from the oxygen-starved blue newborn to the yellow-eyed infant with severe jaundice, and through thirteen surgeries she might never have woken up from. Every sleepy morning, I grumble out of bed to stand in her doorway and watch her breathe. Because she's still here to do it.

I often get home from that morning drive to school just in time to find my oldest daughter making coffee, awake and already full of plans for the day. She rarely spends more than a few hours at a time at home, and when she's home her entire personality is a blazing inferno of boundless energy, high-speed chatter, and randomly abandoned press-on fingernails. She leaves signs of herself everywhere she goes—not only in little scraps of paper and forgotten coffee mugs, but in the echo of her laughter and the hope in her prayers. Sometimes I wonder if her mental gas pedal is glued to the floorboard of her mind. Sometimes I wonder if it's because abandonment issues and self-hatred make her afraid of solitude, or if it's because she's just so damn grateful to be mobile after spending most of 2023 stuck in a wheelchair. Sometimes I compare who she is now to the blue-eyed, rose-lipped baby she used to be. The one who had to be tickled and pinched awake just to eat...because otherwise, the gigantic hole in her heart would have let her sleep herself quietly to death. The young woman she is now overwhelms the introvert in me. Until I remember that sleepless night in the summer of 2007, when I sat praying over her as she slept. Desperately hoping the heart surgery meant to improve her life would not end it.

And always, I nod to the shadow at the edge of those memories. The unknown child I never got to hold. The heartbeat that was so sure, so steady...until it wasn't. The life that left me in unrecognizable bits and pieces. The would-be first child, whose greatest accomplishment in life was to show its mother how precious life is.

After breakfast each morning, I log onto my computer and start a new day in my life as a writer. I plan and organize social media posts. I write blogs like this one (and books, too!). I engage and interact, sharing my experiences. Offering understanding. Always with the hope that something I might share could shed some light on someone else's darkness. That I might open the map of my life, share a similar scar with someone suffering, and hold their hand in wisdom as they find their way.

The roads may vary. Not every soul is scarred by childhood abuse or domestic violence. Not every heart is marked by the pain of miscarriage. Lifemaps are not universally covered in paths of poverty, disability, trauma, and loss. And while they are all filled with milestones—mountains and valleys transected with floodwaters of challenge—most are not covered in notes and calculations. Most do not come with guidebooks full of compass roses, inch-to-mile translation aides, warning signs, and disaster protocols.

For many, survival is instinctive, just one lost person stumbling from one trial to the next, anxious and afraid that every suggestion of brokenness on the soggy terrain of their life guarantees pain and failure.

I choose to see survival as instructive. To mark my map with stories, like dispatches from the wilderness, because my map—as messy as it is, with so many roads paved unevenly in grief and grace—isn’t abstract.

It's the truth of a life lived. And the promise that if I can make it, you can too.

*****

The truth is, the roads of life are messy, full of unexpected twists and sudden floods. We're all navigating maps torn by exhaustion, creased with heartache, damp with the sweat of fear. But when we see that map through a floodlight of hope, trusting God to walk us through—and trusting ourselves to keep moving forward—survival seems a lot more possible.

Every scar and hard-won lesson matters. Not just for you, but for the people who might one day walk a path you’ve already studied. Owning your story doesn't have to mean you're stuck in it, and sharing your story can be more than simple reflection. When you share your map and the stories written on its margins, you offer guidance to those still lost in the wilderness, lifelines tossed to souls still finding their way through the storm.

Take time to notice the small victories, the moments that go unseen, the brilliant treasures in ordinary days, and celebrate them. Mark them on your Lifemap. Let them be reminders of hope in the chaos. And when you get the chance, share that map. Let people trace the roads you’ve traveled, and show them that their journey is survivable. That joy and healing are real places.

Because your life, your scars, your story? They're gifts meant to be shared. And while you can choose to survive just for yourself, you change the map for everyone when your survival lights the way for others to...

There's a special magic in choosing to show up for each other, and every reader who shares their time and emotional energy with me is a precious part of how and why I write the way I do. Now, I'd like to make that as simple as possible for you—with free updates you don't have to search for. Sign up here!