One Sunday at a Time.
I carry a coin with those words stamped into it.
I picked it up from the front desk of my local church back in March, during a season when my family was carrying more than we knew how to carry.
Today, that coin sits on my desk.
A reminder.
One Sunday at a time.
One conversation at a time.
One decision at a time.
That’s how we’ve gotten here.
And today, I’m proud of us.
We’re healing.
We’re growing.
By my own standards, we’re thriving.
Blueberries as a Measure
Back in May, Steve brought home a blueberry bush for our anniversary.
At the time, neither of us could have known how much meaning that little bush would eventually carry.
It wasn’t our best anniversary.
The date was on the calendar, but celebration wasn’t really where we were.
We were tired.
Hurt.
Scared.
Trying to find our footing.
What followed wasn’t a bad week or a rough patch.
It was a reset.
More compound fracture than bad mood.
Painful. Necessary. Exhausting.
For all of us.
Over the last year and a half, our family has navigated five chronic diagnoses.
Three belong to Steve.
Two belong to me.
His trace back to military service from thirty years ago. One diagnosis connects directly to his first battle with cancer.
We were together then, but not yet married. I was living with my parents in Gaylord. Steve was stationed in Norfolk, serving in the Navy.
Thirty years later, pieces of that story found their way back into our lives.
At the same time, I was discovering that I had spent nearly a decade trusting a healthcare system that wasn’t helping me understand what was actually wrong.
At the beginning of this year, I started over.
New doctors.
New questions.
New answers.
It took months to find my way to the right care.
Months of appointments.
Months of waiting.
Months of slowly untangling what had become a very complicated knot.
And then, finally, the pieces began to fit together.
Today, two months into treatment for the right problem, my world feels different.
The fog is lifting.
Colors are brighter.
Possibilities are visible again.
For the first time in a long time, the future feels reachable.
Looking back, the last couple of years are hard to untangle.
Surgeries overlapped recovery periods.
Diagnoses overlapped other diagnoses.
Five different medical stories unfolded at the same time, weaving themselves through every part of our lives.
The timeline feels less like a straight line and more like a knot.
A tangled mess of appointments, medications, waiting rooms, phone calls, paperwork, uncertainty, recovery, setbacks, and hope.
Sometimes I struggle to remember what happened when.
The details blur together.
And maybe that’s part of surviving.
You don’t always process events while you’re living them.
Sometimes your job is simply to make it through.
The processing comes later.
The meaning comes later.
Image Placement
A blueberry bush in the morning sun, heavy with ripening fruit.
Caption: Sometimes the smallest harvests carry the biggest stories.
This morning felt like one of those moments.
Yesterday, I noticed the blueberries were almost ready.
Not quite.
Close.
I picked a few anyway and handed them to Steve.
“These aren’t ripe yet,” he said.
“I know,” I laughed. “Think of them as the appetizer. Tomorrow is breakfast.”
Image Placement
Handful of fresh blueberries against a backdrop of green leaves and morning light.
Caption: Not enough for pie. More than enough for gratitude.
This morning I walked barefoot into the backyard with my coffee.
The grass was still damp from the night.
Cool where the shade lingered.
Warm and supple where the morning sun had already touched it.
I could feel the difference with every step.
The blueberries were waiting.
A small handful.
Not enough for a pie.
Not enough for jam.
Just enough to share.
So I split them with Steve.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of mornings like that.
Bare feet in the grass.
Coffee in one hand.
God-grown energy in the other.
Sunshine on my shoulders.
Fresh fruit from my own backyard.
Nothing fancy.
Nothing expensive.
Nothing that would impress anyone scrolling past a photograph.
Just enough.
The blueberries were sweet.
The dream was sweeter.
Because the dream was never really about blueberries.
The dream was about being healthy enough to notice the grass beneath my feet.
Healthy enough to feel the warmth of the sun.
Healthy enough to imagine tomorrow.
Healthy enough to share breakfast with the man who walked through the storm with me.
The blueberries were simply proof that we had arrived.
Not at the end.
Not at perfection.
Not at certainty.
Just at a morning where healing was visible.
One Sunday at a time.
One blueberry at a time.
Healing looks a lot like that.
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