Personal Life Update from Jessica

This week a friend texted me: “I haven’t gotten many emails about your blog posts. Can you check if I got kicked off the list?” And I said, “Nope. It’s just been awhile. Ha!”

When someone I follow online goes MIA I always mentally run through the possibilities. What in the world happened to her, I wonder?
Did she suddenly move to Uganda and not tell anyone?
Did she get some horrible sickness and can’t bear to tell us?
Is she going through a horrible bout of depression, or appendicitis, or IBS?
Did her husband have an affair?
Did she have an affair?
Does she not believe in God anymore?
(These wild scenarios courtesy of your resident Enneagram 6.)

I am here today to explain the reasons that my posts have been sparse as icicles in May (to borrow a phrase from my dear Jan Karon).

My blog has been alive for 12 years. Twelve years! When my blog was a baby, I would write 2-3 times a week. Back then my kids were in bed at 7pm. I was tired, but lonely. The ideas flowed like a fire hose.

These days, I am no fire hose. More like a wrung-out wash cloth. I often feel like I have no profound insights to give anyone after 3pm — not my husband, and certainly not a waiting, eager blogosphere (real or imagined).

I told my dad I was afraid I am lazy because I don’t write anymore. He proceeded to remind me of the last twelve months of my life — after which we concluded it is still possible I am lazy, but I am also, at least, very busy. If you follow me on Instagram you know some of this but I have been meaning to share the inside parts for awhile. Here is what has been happening in our family.

1. We moved and built a house on acres of land. Was this a long-life dream? No! I loved my neighborhood. I hate change. When my parents found thirty acres for my whole big family to move to, I prayed someone else would buy it. One by one, my sisters and parents began to sell their homes and build their dream homes on this farm. I was still on the fence. Eventually I said to my husband, “You make this decision.” Maybe because he’s a cowboy-at-heart who loved the idea of a big ol’ plot of land, maybe because he caught the vision of what this life could be, maybe a little of both — he said, “We’re doing this.”

The building process has actually been kind of fun…except that time I realized I had not actually closed a credit card I thought I had closed, and it had an unpaid balance for months of $57.45, and my credit score was now 546 — so we were ineligible for a construction loan. THAT was a good time. *if by “good time” you mean I sobbed for hours on end in my townhome bathroom.* We prayed and prayed and if you want to know how we fixed our credit score then email me for the boring details. ps. Go get Lifelock. 

Another highlight was the time it cost $758 for a plank of lumber which would normally cost $3.50 or something. When in my life had I ever cared what the price of lumber was?!? Never! Again, we prayed. I am still not sure how we ended up with lumber that wasn’t the price of rare gems. I will say when it arrived at our building site, I told Todd to camp next to it, guarding it with his shotgun like Pa Ingalls.

The bottom line is, we have designed and built and moved to our beautiful new home. It is wonderful. It is the gift I never knew I wanted, a gift that I pray we share with others.

In the midst of building a house, I have also been making regular trips across the country for my son’s allergy treatment. We are, I guess you could say, desperate.

Every year we have had his bloodwork drawn, and every year it’s terrible. I had lost all hope of him outgrowing his food allergies. One night at the computer I discovered Dr. Inderpal Randhawa’s Southern California Food Allergy Institute. I immediately got tears in my eyes and told my husband, “No matter what — this is where we are taking Sam.” We spent 7 months on the waiting list and one year ago, in the middle of Covid craziness, Sam and I boarded a plane for LAX.

We have since been back three times and will need to go back at least 13 more. (Deep breaths.) In between our trips he eats incrementally larger doses of random foods like chestnut flour and pea protein and camel’s milk and mare’s milk and sheep cheese (I am not lying). He is doing very well so far with the program.

My brain sometimes feels like it’s going to explode to remember that it’s Week 7 and so it’s 7.5mL of camel milk and 4 almonds and not on the morning together and don’t exercise after some of the foods and take this medicine etc etc.

But we are grateful for HOPE!

Additionally this year, I thought (why not?!) this would be a great time to start a homeschool co-op! We’ve always done Classical Conversations, but this year two friends and I build our own community from scratch. THIS IS NO JOKE! Fortunately these two friends are the smartest and most organized people on the planet. If you are curious what we do and how we did it, you can listen to this podcast where I explain the whole thing.

And then I also am coordinating women’s ministry at church. Real life kinds-of-things. It is deeply satisfying.

I get really sad when I think that I am not writing much anymore, but also in the time it took to write this blog post, there were 3 fights and 17 questions and 14 snacks and I just think my calling is mainly to prevent the fights and answer the questions and provide the snacks, THE LAST OF WHICH IS THE WORST ONE!!!!!! Will the snacks never ever stop?

So there you have it! I’m alive! 

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