Just a Couple

06/03/2025

Okay- personally knowing the author of this book- we highly recommend getting a copy for yourself!

D Carl and Lata Brown are dear friends of ours and are dedicated to living their lives for the Lord and raising their sweet family in His ways. Carl is a man after God’s heart and yearns to get God’s truth into as many lives, hearts and minds as possible! He has been an inspiration in my life since the day I met him. He knows how to bring Heaven down through his prayers by speaking out the Truth of God. This book will no doubt be a blessing to you!

Follow David Carl Brown and explore their bibliography from Amazon's David Carl Brown Author Page.

04/02/2025

Every day that my son stays alive, he doesn’t die. Here’s what I mean: he fights to live every day. Every day is a test and if he passes, he gets to keep on living. Don’t we all? Yes of course in some way, we all could not wake up tomorrow. We could get into a car accident or medical emergency and that would be that, the end.

But my son fights a battle every single day and there is never a day off for him. He is a type 1 diabetic. Every day he makes choices according to his best ability and training, surrounding his current status of blood glucose levels and intake of carbs for every meal he ingests, and calculates how much to inject into his body of a substance that can kill him within the hour if he’s off or wrong. No medical doctor following him around. I’m not there every second to double check (not that I am any more qualified). He is 16. He’s been at this now for 3 years.

Our son played baseball. He was (still is!) good. He pitched, play shortstop and 3rd. He was approached for travel teams, recruited for his ability and this specific summer his team had just won the championship! So, they moved on to States, which was very exciting. I had just finished cancer treatment a year earlier, my hair was still short and I felt like this was the first summer our family could get somewhere near “back on track.” Elija was playing games and practicing constantly. He was drinking insane amounts of water and Gatorade, and who could blame him? He needed to hydrate. He began loosing weight and was tired a lot. My mom sense felt like something was off and I kept asking him how he was feeling. He would assure me he felt fine. And I wasn’t certain about my intuitions because of all the medical things we had already gone through, so I felt like maybe I was just being paranoid and tried not to over think this. I chalked his weight loss up to him growing, practicing constantly and the hot summer. Same story with the tons of thirst. I had this nagging feeling something wasn’t right- but I struggle with anxiety and convinced myself my receptors were off because of all the trauma we just went through over the last few years.

It was mid August and like I mentioned this summer had been a hot one. So, this one blistering Saturday was no exception and we were all sweating as we were out by Port Huron watching one of his tournaments. He usually was quick to the ball, fast as lighting, we actually would joke and call him “The Flash”. But at this important game, something seemed off. He moved like he was running through sand with heavy feet. The other teams batter hit the ball, it was a grounder and as it rushed towards where Elija would normally have easily gotten to it and scooped it up, he sluggishly scuffled over to it and as he bent to lower his glove, it had already whizzed past him. Both his dad and I were shocked and I got up and yelled: “what’s going on out there!?! You shoulda had that!!!” like only the best most wonderful supportive mom would….to this day I feel absolutely horrible about that moment, by the way. Not my finest by far. Anyway, he didn’t even really realize he had missed the ball and when I walked over to the fence and he came up to me, he said, “I don’t know what happened. I put my glove down. It was like I just couldn’t get there fast enough.” And then I knew something wasn’t right for real. We left the game that day and he wasn’t feeling good. To be honest I still don’t remember if they won or lost, or anything else about the rest of that game- but they must have still won because I know his team went on to win either States or another championship or something without him because after he came home from the hospital, his coach came by with a trophy and stuff from his teammates for him.

The next few days were a blur and yet also I remember every detail….which I won’t share now. But the gist is that our son was admitted to the pediatric ICU and was hospitalized for 4 days. He was in DKA with dangerously high blood sugar levels and we could have lost him had we waited. At the hospital I immediately put all else in my mind aside and learned everything that I could possibly retain about what his care would require, so I could try to set him up for success once we returned home. I would have traded places with him in an instant if it were possible…I still would. It felt surreal, unbelievable to be in the hospital again, only this time with my son. It felt like an insurmountable task. And I wasn’t ready. Like we as a family had just had the wind knocked out of us and haven’t even recovered yet before we got kicked down again.

The months ahead were filled with lots of ups and downs (not just blood sugar) but being up at night all night monitoring him, and down during the day just literally crying asking God why in the world this had to happen to him. It was like having a newborn again. The level of exhaustion. The lack of sleep, the constant watching, the learning how to feed someone - chart everything, calculate everything. He was a trooper and he is my hero. For months after he would flinch at the needles. Even though that has since subsided (not anything any kid should have to get used to), we still have a lot to learn and deal with…. and I’m still waiting to feel like we will be “back on track”. That summer things were supposed to go back to normal. I beat cancer and we were going to get our life back. I’m still angry about it if I’m being honest. I still don’t “accept” this as his fate. He doesn’t deserve this. And I truly don’t know if we will ever really get back on track ever again because that old life seems like it was a movie I watched once that I just kind of remember. I think maybe that “movie” is the ideal dream of our family that I have in my head of what I think it’s supposed to look or be like. Maybe that dream is wrong and dead or maybe I need to surrender it… BUT whatever the case- we move ahead. We keep going. And we choose joy. Something I used to say during cancer treatment. CHOOSE joy.

My testimony today is that the life of my son was spared in August 2021. That year ended with a certain kind of pain, but in the end he is still here, alive and breathing. No matter what he has to deal with- he has the ability to deal with it because God has given him the gift of life and the chance to continue to live it after it was nearly snuffed out. My testimony today is that there is joy in the mundane and even in the difficult. We can always find something to be joyful and thankful for if we look. And if we focus on it, it becomes more clear and defined. I want to allow the anger I feel to dull and blur into the background so I can allow the joy to take up the whole lens… until eventually the anger disappears altogether.

Thank you Jesus for saving my son’s life. Thank you for insulin. Thank you for the medical staff that saved him and cared for him over the course of those days spent in the hospital and thank you for his doctors who take such excellent care for him now. Thank you for allowing me to be his mom and for helping us deal with the insurmountable on the daily. My testimony today is that when we look to God for our strength, He will carry us through times we surely couldn’t walk or even crawl through on our own. He is always faithful. 🤍

25/11/2024

🤍

The “Grandpa” in your family/group can be multiple people, can be young, old, in between, man or woman and they can be stationary (in the chair) or not…just because it doesn’t look exactly like this illustration, doesn’t mean there isn’t one (or some).

And, you’ll likely get flack from those “keep Grandpa happy-ers” in the group, but your children won’t have to deal with the continuous cycle throughout their life. So, being brave is worth the temporary hate.

29/10/2024

In 2019, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.
Over the next long year, I fought. And survived.

”The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.“ •Romans‬ ‭8‬:‭11‬ ‭(nlt)

”I will not die; instead, I will live to tell what the Lord has done.“ •Psalms‬ ‭118‬:‭17‬ ‭(nlt)

”Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.“ •Ephesians‬ ‭3‬:‭20‬ ‭(nlt)

22/10/2024

”I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.“
‭‭
—Jesus in John‬ ‭14‬:‭6‬ ‭(NLT‬‬)

The Truth. It’s a struggle. It can be a challenge to find, to believe, to speak, to hear, to comprehend, to accept. One thing about the truth is that it’s true whether we believe in it or not. I mean- facts are facts, even if we deny them. So, eventually the truth will surface and we’ll have to deal.

I’ve struggled with this. A lot. I believe lies, I allow them to fester and grow and take them as true and then everything blows up because it was never real. I’ve been in that situation countless times. Do I really want to know the real truth though? Is it easier to believe a lie. Something sugar coated or more pretty to look at? Is the truth always horrible or is it that I am just afraid that it will be, so I try to avoid it?

What is the truth? In the Bible, Jesus says, “I AM THE TRUTH.” What? It’s not a thing…it’s a whom. It can be a thing. But, if the focus is on the person who is that thing, it’s easier to accept. Of course Jesus would have to be someone you believe in and eventually trust. Which, I do…I believe. And I’m learning to trust more and more over time. But I do know that He CAN be trusted. He holds the key. He shows the way. He walks it with me, whatever the truth looks like. Not “my truth” but the actual truth. Which is always better in the end. No matter how uncomfortable it may be to begin with.

I love this song because it shares the truth of who I really am, it encourages me. My testimony today is how I’ve spent much of my life believing lies and not living in truth. But, God set me free from that! 🤍

Official lyric video for “The Truth” by Megan WoodsStream or download the song here: https://fts.lnk.to/MWTruthConnect With Megan Woods:Facebook: https://www...

15/10/2024

What is a testimony?

The dictionary defines it as a formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law; evidence or proof provided by the existence or appearance of something.

The church, especially within the Evangelical tradition, use the term "to testify" or "to give one's testimony" to mean "to tell the story of how one became a Christian". Commonly it may refer to a specific event in a Christian's life in which God did something deemed particularly worth sharing.

I got all of that from Google.

I used to think a person had 1 testimony. Like, if someone became a Christian, converted to Christianity or decided to follow Jesus… the story of that one event was their testimony. I used to struggle with my testimony because according to that logic, it was pretty boring. I grew up in church and officially accepted Jesus as my personal savior when I was 8 years old. I remember it like it was yesterday. I decided I wanted Jesus to live in my heart and went into my bedroom, closed the door, knelt down and prayed “the sinners prayer” as best I could. I KNEW what I had just done because it was intentional and I felt different afterward. More accountable, I guess. Lighter. Happier. I felt like I made an important decision and my life was about to change. I came out of my room and told my mom and that was that.

I think people think when they decide to follow
Jesus that the grass is greener and now you’re under some divine protective bubble and float through life with rainbows and happiness. I mean, maybe I thought that anyway. I was a pretty happy child already, so what could go wrong now?

Well, my mom could get married is what could go wrong. My mom was a single mom and of course I wanted her to be happy! So when she met a guy when I was 9, I was happy! Things seemed okay, until they announced their engagement and got married 3 months after they met…. and everything changed. I won’t go into detail but he was severely abusive and just not a healthy individual. Of course I had zero clue about what a dad should look like, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t like what we had to endure in our home.

Things kept getting worse in my life and while
I did cling onto my faith, I often wondered why? Why was this all happening? Why were things so hard? I felt alone, my happy childhood was long gone and as I became an adult I didn’t make great choices. I definitely survived my life and didn’t live it. I definitely felt like life wasn’t worth living or even surviving for a greater deal of time than I’d like to admit. However, I pressed on.

What is a testimony? It’s a written or spoken statement that provides evidence of the existence of something. For me: a testimony is anything that points back to proof that there is a God. And I have way more than just 1. I’ve wrestled with doubt and thinking I was childish to believe in such fairy tales when everything around me was crumbling and a happy day was no where in sight. However, I’ve learned that God doesn’t ever promise “happiness.” He promises the intangible. Those moments where I’ve barely held on and thought I wasn’t going to make it and yet I did. I didn’t make it through those times because I kept my faith. It never had anything to do with me or how hard I worked or how much I believed. It had to do with HIM and that when I surrendered my life to Him, He never ever left me in those times. He was with me through all of the darkest ones… then why doesn’t he just rescue us out of them!? Life here on earth isn’t Heaven. Life here on earth is filled with pain, suffering and uncertainty. But I never have to go through it alone. And one day I do have the hope of Heaven, but for now I can find joy in the sunshine and the fresh air and my family. Life is hard, but my testimony today is of Gods faithfulness through it all. I’m still here to tell about it and will continue to do so until I’m not. 🤍

01/10/2024

This summer a good friend of mine invited me to yoga and I went. After the first session, I was instantly obsessed….

It was hard though and I never wanted to do it again while simultaneously wanting to do more right then.

I can move my body and I have a body that works. I used to be pretty good about fitness, staying in shape and eating healthy. Then after chemo wiped me clean, I was weak and weighed almost nothing. The last surgery I had as a part of my treatment put me into surgical menopause and it hit like a ton of bricks. Normally a woman will gradually enter menopause and go through symptoms over time, as her body delivers less and less estrogen. For me, my estrogen was cut off completely and all of a sudden exercises that had worked for me in the past no longer did. I began getting creaky joints and gaining weight. I gave up eating healthy because (and pardon the dooms-day attitude here but judge me if and only if you’ve ever gone through the cancer treatment I did) it didn’t seem to matter any more anyway. I had denied myself calories and yummy things my whole entire life and for what. So I could fight cancer and then die!? That was my head space. So, I decided to eat all the ice cream and chocolate and drink all the soda and wine I wanted to. Plus working out made no difference… I was literally gaining weight while working out and eating healthy for the first time in my life. I figured if cancer resurfaced and I was going to go down anyway, why not go down enjoying things I used to not let myself enjoy! I mean, YOLO right?

Something about yoga and spending time being with my sweet, real, non judgmental friend gave me a spark back. I mean- she might honestly be the entire inspiration for these Testimony Tuesday’s! I started feeling better and remembering how good intentional movement felt. I started changing my mindset from “who care’s about anything anyway” to “who care’s if I don’t change on the outside- I’m alive and able and I can feel good in my body even if it doesn’t look like the picture I have in my head.”

Sometimes the testimony isn’t in what IS, but in what isn’t. In the lack of harm, the lack of danger, the lack of negligence that leads to a destructive mindset or lifestyle. I think my testimony today is being thankful for the ability to move my body and use it in ways to feel better. There may not be any physical evidence of change, but it isn’t always what IS, this time it’s what isn’t. I’m not fighting cancer. I’m not weak. I’m not giving up. Thank you Lord for the ability to see things from your perspective. You created us and using our minds and bodies in ways that honor the life you’ve given us creates space for health.

Thank you Jesus for your breath of life in my life!

24/09/2024

Starting a new thing. Basically it’s been a few years now that I’ve spent allowing the negatives of life to consume my thoughts. Which has taken a downward spiral and I see the effects of it splattered all over. I want to be intentional about positivity again, and for me that includes recalling how God has worked in my life. The things that I believe He has done, solely out of His good nature. I want to write these things out so that I can remember and focus on His goodness. Y’all don’t have to come on this ride with me, but I want to make sure I have it where I’m going to see it and a notebook just isn’t cutting it. I’m calling it Testimony Tuesday. So, here goes my first one:

I follow some parenting pages. This popped up in my feed today and struck me. I had completely forgotten about this condition… yet it is something that affected our family.

Lately- I’ve been trying to purposefully remember the goodness of God in our lives. So when I saw this, I started thinking about this Selective Mutism situation that we faced and my hearted shouted: God got us through THAT. 🤯 God is faithful to complete what He has begun.

In preschool, our oldest was diagnosed with Selective Mutism. I had not heard of the term before then. You see, in preschool- he never said a single word to his teacher. The whole entire year. When he graduated, his teacher had not once heard his voice. Then in kindergarten, he still did not speak. He had to start learning how to read, so it became a bigger “problem.” He spoke at home and he read out loud, but at school he became paralyzed with fear. I didn’t know what to do. He was our first child and it was overwhelming. He then received treatment through therapy for a full 2 years. While he improved, he still wasn’t rid of the extreme social anxiety that would overcome him in certain situations. We continued to try to get him the help he needed over the years. I would stay up nights and cry and beg the Lord for guidance on how to help him. It was so hard to watch him deal with this and I hated imagining what our poor little boy was going through. I’m not going to go through every detail, but I know that I know God helped him overcome this insanely strong fear. This same child, who was diagnosed with selective mutism and severe anxiety disorder at 5 years old, stood in front of hundreds of people and gave a speech at one of his high school graduation ceremonies just 12 years later. When I say I’m proud of him and when my eyes filled with tears during this moment- it’s because I remember all the nights of pleading with God to help him. And it’s because I’m in awe of God’s faithfulness. It may have not happened overnight. But, it happened. God never left him in his fears, He met him there. He walked with him and he helped him overcome. Our son now speaks in public and in front of people. I see that as an everyday miracle.