Up until now, I had been able to manage life’s circumstances relatively well, and I did an even better job hiding the parts of me that weren’t managing. What I expected to be one of the best events of my life – the birth of my first child – had become something quite different. I initially thought it was just the post-partum hormones combined with a lack of sleep. I was crying constantly. I was anxious. That darkness that descended on me when I got home from the hospital continued to linger. What I didn’t realize was I had post-partum…
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It had been a few months since I graduated from college. I had no job, no place to live, and I was forced to move back in with my parents. This was not supposed to be Grace the Great’s life. Grace the Great was smart and successful. She had plans to be the best of the best. She was going to make a lot of money and leave her broken childhood behind. Living at home was probably the worst thing for me at this point in my life. It was a constant reminder of how awful my past was, and…
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*Parts 1-5 are available under the Story tab on the blog. For much of my life, I never really had “close” girlfriends. I was always in the “popular” crowd, and I had several friends who I’d hang out with, but I was never the leader of the group, and I always kind of felt like my girlfriends I did have didn’t care much whether we were friends or not. I think much of that had to do with I typically had serious, long-term boyfriends. My boyfriend during much of high school was a great guy. We were together from my…
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I wanted to take a minute to explain more of who my parents are, but I realized that if you have never met any of us, you probably have a very different picture painted of them than you should based on what I’ve written so far. If I had to describe my parents in one word, it would be selfless. They are the kindest, my loving and caring people you will ever meet. They loved and continue to love all of my siblings and I to a fault. They have a hard time saying no because they don’t want to…
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*Go to the Story page on the blog to read parts 1-3. When William was two years old, my parents adopted him. I honestly don’t remember much about it. My parents probably talked to me about it beforehand, but I imagine any conversations they had with me were more of my mom and dad talking about it and me being in the room hearing them talk. But I actually kind of liked William at this point. He and I had formed a bond of sorts. He would come in my room a lot, and we would hang out on my…
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I want to be exceedingly clear about this. The whole point of my blog is to TALK about sin and POINT OUT my sin. I am NOT trying to normalize sin, diminish sin, or suggest in anyway that it is okay to sin. Please don’t ever twist my words or read between the lines on this. Sin is like a bottle of ink. If you spill it on a rug or your clothes, that ink is never going away no matter how many times you wash it, scrub it, bleach it, etc. The damage is permanent. And let me tell…
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Last time, I told you about how my parents became foster parents and how mad I was about them. Per usual, they didn’t really have conversations with me about it, so I was left to just pretend like everything was okay on the outside while internalizing all of my real emotions. I left off with William, our family’s first foster child, being brought to our home for the first time. He was a newborn at the time. Life continued on. I kept being secretly mad at my parents. I kept drowning myself in school work and good grades and extracurricular…
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Sunday morning. We got to spring forward last night, so I lost an additional hour of sleep, in case I wasn’t already sleep deprived. I heard TJ wake up (hard not to hear him since he comes in our room every night and sleeps on a sleeping bag on the floor because he gets scared) around the old 7am which is now 8am. (I’ll probably be doing that a lot over the next few days…thinking about what time it actually is verses what time it should be. Ah daylight savings time. Gotta love it.) We didn’t go to church last…
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Confessions is about more of the day-to-day stuff in my life. I think my story is something that needs to be shared, and it makes sense to do it first so that you all can get to know me better and understand what I mean when I say I am imperfect. But once my story is told and it brings us to present day, my life will continue, and so will this blog. That’s where Confessions comes in. Let me give you some context by using a couple examples. You’ll notice that it’s all about comparison. I would imagine everyone…
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Last time I told you about most of my childhood. It was largely very normal, and one that many of you may find a lot of similarities with. Typical “nuclear” family, upper-middle class, two kids. My parents and I had a lot of communication issues (or really, just did not communicate much at all), and to this day I don’t really know why. Most of my deeper conversations took place with my sister, Margaret, and she was kind of the go-between for my parents and I. My parents didn’t mean anything by it, and I don’t think they even realized…