Joyfully After All

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Joyfully After All

Dedicated to all of us searching for joy, smiles & help to navigate this crazy journey called life. I am unashamedly in love with Jesus & talk about Him.

I am available to speak on a variety of topics. I am willing to travel to wherever you happen to be. I use PowerPoint as well as a variety of other forms of technology to share God's love and healing power.

11/05/2026

11-5-26

Today I am thankful for books and the enjoyment I get from a well crafted novel. I am thankful for biographies and all I can learn from them. I am thankful for finding new authors, but also returning to well loved ones. I am thankful for series where the characters become good friends and trying to solve the mystery before the end. I just love books. I love drinking hot chocolate and snuggling my cats while I read a good book.

11/04/2026

11-4-2026

I serve the risen Savior and His spirit is alive and well today. God is still holy, loving, righteous, and in charge.

The midterm election results have been announced and for Conservatives it didn’t go so well. For Liberals it’s a time to celebrate. For Christians it’s a reminder to be in constant prayer.

We need to pray for those our nation has elected. Pray they lead with wisdom and not greed. Pray the right bills are proposed and passed. Bills that do true good. Pray that understanding and compassion come back into style.

Today I am thankful for my nation. I am thankful that I can at any moment pray for America and God hears my prayers. He may not always answer the way I think He should, but He ALWAYS answers.

The election may not have gone your way, but it didn’t shock Jesus. The end is already written, we are just the details moving the story along. And I for one am thankful to have the Bible and that God chose to tell us what our future will be.

Knowing the end gives me comfort, so win or lose in election cycles I don’t have to panic or get overly excited because I know this is just a phase and eternity with God in His perfect land awaits someday.

Till then, I do pray we make America (& other countries, I just happen to call America home) a country that turns back as a nation to a land that is kind and good, and where our elected officials lead as statesmen and women where the focus is on doing right and not just getting rich.

So today I choose to be thankful that I get to pray for all that, and God hears my prayers.

11/02/2026

November 2, 2026

I just re-read my post from one year ago today. My Dad was headed to Heaven, where he resides today.

Since 11-2-25 I have watched as my Dad left here for his eternal home. Despite my pleas for God to restore Dad’s health and give us more time with him. I have helped my daughter navigate life post Papa (her all time favorite human). I have learned how to navigate life post Dad.

I have bounced around the stages of grief, not traveling a linear route, but a very chaotic one.

Through it all I have had God loving me. I have the cats He gave me. And today I am focusing on my gratitude for Willow Yata and Buttons.

It is these two crazy felines who have snuggled and purred as I cried and yelled. Who listen and don’t judge. Who offer a purr when I need it most.

They have provided my daughter with love too, putting up with her antics and snuggling her at night.

Pets are such special parts of a family and I am thankful for the two we have.

11/01/2026

We’ve made it to November. My favorite month. The month where my socials become all about gratitude. Cheesy but that’s me! 😊

2026 has been rough. It is in my top 3 years for most tears shed. 2002, 2013, and 2026. Those same years I have also had my angriest moments. My “How Lord am I going to find my joy now?” moments. My “I don’t get it and you really screwed up here God.” moments. These are the years I spent the most times turning and running from God, only to have to admit that was wrong and make a 180° turn.

Through it all, through all my brokenness, my grief, my anger, my questions, my spiritual goof-ups, my sins, my God has been God.

He loves me through it. He doesn’t get angry or overstimulated. He does’t get his feelings hurt. He understands what is behind all of it and He loves me through it and His spirit draws me back to where I need to be.

How can I be anything but grateful for God’s nature? For his love, kindness, and patience. For His ability to let me be me and work through my grief in the time I need and the way I need.

I would be remiss if I didn’t start the month stating my gratitude for my Savior God. I love Him immensely and am very thankful He has helped through this year and the trust I have that He will continue to be just what I need for all the days (good and bad) ahead.

I’m not as holy, faithful, and sanctified as I’d like and need to be, but I am thankful that God is helping me get there, day by day. And when I fall and have to start over, God helps me.

Thank you Lord for being unwaveringly You and helping me get through this past year, find times of joy, and through it all to become a little more of the woman after your heart that I strive to become.

10/09/2026

Learning to trust Christ and develop Even If and No Matter What faith is hard and oftentimes painful. It is learning to truly give EVERYTHING to the Lord. It is saying, “Lord this is what I want. Lord this holy thing I yearn for. Lord, You know my heart, but even if You say no or not now I will still praise You I will still trust you.”

Praising God after a no or a wait is hard! Especially if that thing you want is a good thing.

It is just as hard to praise Him when He takes away something or someone we love. To say, “God my heart is shattered, it is in a million pieces and I don’t it. God this is beyond my capacity to handle.” is a holy admission.

Jesus warned us that life with Him is the right choice, but choosing Him doesn’t mean He removes pain here during this life.

Jesus paid our death penalty for sin. We still have earthly consequences for choices and those come with pain.

What Jesus does promise is that our tears and pain end the moment we take our last breath. Death for the believer is a beginning of eternal joy, eternal peace. Death is the end of pain.

We just have to hold strong. Cry our tears. Shout our pain. Withstand the trials. If we do that with Even If faith, with an eternal mindset, this life gets easier.

The rains become refreshing. The snows become fun. Thunder is celebratory, rain renews, and sun radiates.

These lessons are hard but vital to finding more smiles along the way.

10/06/2026

I promised myself that with this account I would be transparent. My flaws would be here, and the good stuff too.

Lately I feel like life is just HEAVY. There isn’t much light, much happiness. There is joy with the sorrow, silver linings in the hard, but still, a lot of HEAVY.

So tonight as I rested my fatigued achy body, my just recovering from COVID body, I listened to a worship playlist. Really two songs. Even If and Broken Hallelujah.

These two songs became my prayer. My striping down, letting Jesus have my heavy, feeling the tears flow prayers.

God can say 1 prayer and the heavy becomes light, the dark becomes bright, and the hard has an easy button. 1 word. 1 thought. 1 glimmer. The twinkling of eye you could say.

But it doesn’t seem like He is doing that. It seems I need more refinement. I have more spiritual strength to gain, my patience to grow. My reliance on Him.

That’s a hard pill to swallow. To be bare and admit to God, “I get it. I’m still a really rough work in progress.”

So Even If God doesn’t remove the hard, Even If He leaves me in the furnace, I still owe Him my hallelujahs. I owe Him praise. I owe Him worship.

Even if the hallelujah is broken. If even if it hard. I owe Him because never for a minute, even in the moments I felt the most alone, I hurt the most, I cried the hardest. Even then, I never felt the abandonment Jesus did.

And Jesus did that for ME, so that I could know beyond a shadow that HE gets it. Not only has He saved my soul, He is with me in the heavy and the light.

So yeah, life is a LOT right now. Probably is for you too, but GOD is wanting to be with you in the hard, helping reclaim it by refining you and using it to help us grow in His wisdom.

Bonus- all this heavy will make the light of our Heavenly eternity that much grander and brighter.

10/03/2026

As a teen I prayed and prayed for God to bless me with 3 children, a husband and this perfect family of my own with a cozy home and white picket fence. That was my American dream.

At 18 I got pregnant in my dorm room, not knowing who the father was. At 19 just as the first trimester was moving into the 2nd, my child skipped this life for an eternity with Jesus.

10 years later I was married to a man I loved and preparing to welcome our little girl into the world.

She arrived and I thought I’d burst with love for her, my husband, and my Savior who knitted her and brought her from my womb.

At 30 I lost my husband to choices out of my control, and the child I was pregnant with was miscarried and went straight to Heaven to join his or her sibling.

My little Smowflake continued to grow into this unique human child full of zest, struggles, and lots of snuggles.

October is the month we remember the children we didn’t get to see grow to adulthood. Yet as a Mom I think of them often. My one child here is such a unique human, I often wonder about the other two. What would they look like? Would they be nerds like I am? Would they be athletic? Readers? Creative? What?

I am thankful for my Snowflake, even in the moments when parenting is far from glamorous and I don’t know what to do, what to say, and I’m crying in frustration in my car.

I get frustrated because I love her so much and I want to this perfect Mom for her and I am FAR from that.

With the Lord’s guidance, we are making it. Day by day. We are growing together. We are learning to trust Christ more and more. We forgive each other and try to not make the same mistakes.

Yes, I’m her MOM and it is a privilege and position I don’t take lightly, knowing she’s my only one here. It is my job to guide her to become the woman God sees she can be. I’m not her BFF.

It is just the two of us though, so it is atypical.

I wonder about my other two while being thankful for the kid I do have here, and I hug her extra tightly. I am thankful that someday I’ll meet those two.

Parenting is hard and wonderful all at once. Especially when you are parenting a Snowflake. Soft and delicate, but also a 1 flake blizzard all on her own.

10/02/2026

Grief is an interesting beast. You can be doing really well, and P**F a smell, a picture, a song, driving by a building, anything small and it hits like a wave engulfing you, and the tears stream down again.

Through the tears and the pain there is hope the Holy Spirit whispers to your heart, “This is only temporary.” And just like that, a little smile returns. Not a big one, just a small smile.

Life feels long when we are in the midst of the hard, the dark, the painful. Grief says this is forever. When we step back and look we see that it is not long at all. Grief is a liar because we see that really this life is temporary.

Life may be 70, 80, or even a 100 years long, but then that is it. We are done. And our eternity, our forever, our permanent will depend solely on what we did with Jesus.

Did we choose faith in Him as Messiah or reject His offer of Heaven? That’s it.

It doesn’t matter if we believe in a young earth or an old one. It doesn’t matter if we voted liberally or conservatively. It doesn’t matter if we were rich or dirt poor.

Yes, as Christians we live as the Bible says to live because in part it says, “Thank you Jesus”, but good works don’t get us to a Heavenly forever. Only Jesus does.

It’s comforting to me to know this. Because I’m not good at being perfect. My scales would not weigh heavily on the angelic side. I try. I fail.

Even my Dad, if he were here would tell you his scales weighed more on the imperfect.

I can grieve, I can miss him, I can cry, I can wish he were still here with a whole bunch of my heart, and I can do all this with joy because joy is not happiness. Joy is faith that says, “Jesus has me and Jesus says if I run my race it gets so much better. Jesus says accepting Him means the temporary will through death give birth to an amazing forever.”

Grief is funny because you can grieve and be joyful at the same time.

09/12/2026

September 2001 I was in college in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. I was getting ready for my early morning class when I saw the first plane fly into the tower. I was in the classroom with others as we watched the second plane hit. We sat transfixed, shocked, scared, and bewildered as the rest of the events unfolded. The Pentagon. The collapse of the towers. The plane going down in Pennsylvania. All civilian planes grounded. Americans dying. Americans trapped. A normal quiet morning that would be one that for decades would reverberate with silent tears.

September 2011 I was still a newlywed and pretty pregnant with my daughter. 10 years after the fateful day. America had rebuilt. Lives continued; changed, safer in ways, angrier in ways, but continuing nonetheless.

September 2025. I was back in Wyoming. Surrounded by family and friends as we started to realize our patriarch, our Papa, our beloved Brad was quickly packing his bags for Heaven.

September 2026. Celebrating the birth of twin boys to one family. A little girl to another. New life. Hope. Joy. Smiles.

Death is the hard and the tragic. But it is part of life. We grieve. We are changed by it. We can’t become cemented in it. We have to be open to new joy. New memories.

Our time here on earth is finite and over in the blink of an eye.

Living joyfully is living purposefully. Loving intentionally. Grieving as necessary. Embracing the good. Seeing the beauty. Being in the moment. Thanking God for all your moments.

None of us really know the moment God has appointed for death to take us. We need to spend the days we have by fully living for God while we are here. Share HIS love and the way to salvation. Laugh a LOT. Smile till you get wrinkles. See all the GOOD in your days.

Not every day will be a festival day, but there will always be something to praise God over. Even if it is to praise Him for being with us in the hard.

9/11/01 showed us that even in horror there are reasons to praise. We praise God for instilling courage in all those who ran TOWARD danger and saved others. We praise God the full evil plan of humans didn’t happen.

If we each focus on loving our neighbors and being kind we will have the America of 9/12 back. That’s an America worth striving for.

Joy. Joy is birthed in focusing on the right things and knowing that for believers to live is Christ, is good, is holy, but to die, oh that will be our gain on the day God says it is time. Till then we live fully and with joyful faith.

9/11 had many lessons for those who lived through it. September. A month of change from summer to fall. The month Americans were shown we are vulnerable. A month of countless tears.

September is also the month that showed us we can be united. We can love our neighbors. We can put the petty aside.

September a month to pause to remember, but to also get up and live by loving.

08/29/2026

When you tell Chatty G (ChatGPT) to make a cartoon photo of you on a Redneck paddleboard, this is the result. I love it. Maybe living in a trailer has turned me Redneck. I don’t mind that too much.

I was sitting outside after work watching my kid play with our cats and just enjoying the cooler weather. It was nice.

I then came in. And perused my FB memories on my private page. As I saw 1st day of school photos of the Snowflake with her grandparents I smiled at the memories.

A couple of nights ago I wrote a short story about what I think my first day in Heaven will be like.

As I’m resting here tonight it hits me. I have more peace and calm in my spirit than I have in a long time. It feels like since last August I have been chin deep in the ocean and battered by grief waves that pull me under. I get back up, and get hit by another grief wave. And on and on.

Lately I am feeling like the waves are more gentle now and I can just sit on the edge. I’m not in so deep.

It is refreshing because grief is exhausting.

I will always miss my Dad. He was very special and central to my life. I will hate that he can’t be here for the big moments anymore, or the little ones.

Yet, I know that I can make it. I can still enjoy all the moments and not feel guilty because he is enjoying Heaven right now and he does not feel guilty to be there. We are both where God wants us.

I don’t understand why 2025 was Dad’s year to go, but it isn’t my job to understand. It is my job to trust God’s timing and trust that God had His reasons.

God is good, even when what we are experiencing doesn’t seem good.

My Dad knew me. Before he died he told me, “Jesser fill your life not with grief for me, but with joy. You pursue the joy God wants to give you. We will see each other again. So don’t grieve forever. I’ll be more than fine.”

I’m finally getting to the stage where I can do that and it feels good. Dad IS more than fine.

Snowflake and I are too. We had an amazing trip this summer and she is going to make great memories at school this year, and lots of life is going to happen because God is good.

Living joyfully is embracing all the seasons of life and realizing that grief shouldn’t be your only one. It is ok and good to fully enjoy the days God gives you after He calls a loved one home.

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Sheridan, WY
82801

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http://www.snowflakesandjoy.blogspot.com/

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