I had the gift of growing up in the countryside of Asheville, NC. My family moved there when I was four, and if it weren’t for the lack of a nursing school in the area (and my want for a little independence away from home), I probably would have stayed there forever. But I had a dream to become a nurse and did everything I could to make that happen.
I graduated from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s BSN program in 2013. My husband Austin and I met my junior year, and he proposed the April before I graduated. Our first home was in Concord, NC due to his career in NASCAR. He has been a pit crew athlete (specifically a front tire changer) for over fifteen years. Not long after we were married, I began working as a Labor and Delivery nurse (a job I had always dreamt of) and had the joy and privilege of helping mommas bring new life into the world.
After we had our eldest son, Liam, I made the decision to stay home with him, and Austin and I took that time to pursue our dream of finding some land in the country. After searching for almost a year, the Lord blessed us with our now property of twenty-five acres in Salisbury, NC. There was a house already on it, but it needed renovations. We did almost all of the renovations ourselves and after eight years of living here, I can say we still have more to do (I think I’ve just accepted that there will always be renovations). But we have completely transformed it and made it our own, our home. We've had a few different types of animals since we've lived here: our two dogs, Willow and Red (including a litter of puppies from Red), one barn cat, lots of chickens, turkeys, and tons of wildlife. We recently just fenced our pasture and are in the process of adding some cows and pigs to the mix!
Our second son, Graham, was born a year and half after we bought the house, and once again our lives were filled with unexplainable joy. Then a year later, on Graham’s first birthday, we found out we were expecting our third, and we shifted our lives to prepare for life with three under the age of five. But at my eighteen-week ultrasound, we received news we could have never imagined.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know any other way of saying this. There is no heartbeat.”
Our son, Asher, had gone home to be with the Lord. Two days later, I delivered him, and we had precious time getting to hold him and soak in every part of him before letting the funeral home take him away to be cremeated.
It was a life-shattering moment for us. But out of the ashes He gave a crown of beauty and a joyous blessing (Is. 61:3), and we felt and saw firsthand, the goodness of the Lord in the darkest of days.
It wasn’t long after Asher’s death, that the Lord began stirring my heart to write a book for mothers who had lost a baby. I sat on my couch, holding my Bible in my hands, begging God for answers, wishing there was a book written by a mother who had walked in my shoes and could guide me through this, only to find out there were very few resources available for mothers who have experienced this.
A few years later, I’m overjoyed to say that the book is in the hands of the publisher and is well underway to being printed and released. The official release date is February 4, 2025.
Our story so far has (in many ways) looked far different than what we thought it would, but we’ve been reminded over and over again, that’s often how the Lord works in our lives. He pulls us out of our comfort zones and the areas that are familiar to us, and blesses us with more than anything we could have imagined.
