Writing helps me make sense of things that don’t make sense. Writing is where I turn when problems beg to be solved. Writing is how I connect with people I love. Writing is my calling, my vocation, my love language, my act of service to God and world.

I married a guy I met and fell in love with in my high school youth group. I loved him hard while dating thousands of miles apart during college, and when oceans separated us after we were married. I love being his wife and I love spending time with him in the seasons we’ve shared together. Because “love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” (Khalil Gibran, The Prophet).

I love being a mom. I love reading children’s books. I love doing arts and crafts and singing silly songs. I don’t always love my job as family manager. I don’t always love the messes, the illnesses, the sleeplessness, the responsibility of raising little humans. But I love being a mom. And our children and our family time are my favorite priority.

I love transferring the notes of my heart onto a page that can be held in your hand, shared across miles, and reread half a century later. I love how rereading a favorite letter soaks me in love. I love wedding invitations addressed with calligraphy… the culmination of writing and love and letters and art that flourishes from the dark dregs of the inkwell.

Love is my why. Love is why I write. Love is why my family comes first. Love is why my faith guides everything I do. Because God loved us so much He sent his love, personified, into the world through his son Jesus—our telltale of how to live kinder and love harder. In Him we live and move and have our being.