In a world quickly being pulled into AI, we can be grounded when we remember the wisdom and clarity that lies within us, a gift from God.
One of the things that has amazed me in 2025 is the overwhelming creep of AI into my life, from vacation planning to finding answers to questions that in previous years would have taken me multiple Google searches and days to find. As much as AI makes things easier, it definitely makes me cringe when I see how fast the world is changing, from digital AI graphics, to photos that ‘never really existed’, to testimonials that we swear are real, but can be attributed to no human ever. How do we discern truth and grow in wisdom?
Tomorrow will be my 2000th day of a streak in the YouVersion Bible app, where before I begin the “rest of my day”, I spend time in God’s word and grow in my relationship with Jesus. I happened to notice my streak the other day, surprised at the proximity of such a large milestone. Focusing on a streak number is not important to me, but the pull to spend time with Jesus is what draws me in each day. Through that time of prayer and study, whether it is just 5 minutes on the craziest of days or days where I am continuously drawn into more, I can feel God’s presence. I can better see and understand God’s blessings and plans for me. I can better hear where God is calling me next. This is a wisdom that AI will never touch.
In years past, through meditation and reflection, I have focused on a word or phrase to begin a new year, such as Embrace or Joy. As I reflect on this past year and embrace 2026, I am drawn to the words, “Ears to Hear”. Only I can hear what God is calling me to do or where to go. The phrase “one who has ears to hear, let them hear” can be found numerous times in the Bible from the Old Testament prophecies to parables by Jesus in the New Testament. Crazy enough, AI tells me that this phrase appears around 20-25 times throughout the Bible…so it must be important.
In only a few months, our move back to the US will be complete, after more than three and a half years living internationally in Germany. I am moving back to my home state, but to a place where I have not lived in over 25 years. The amount of “newness” in 2026 is enough to make my heart rate spike and my stomach churn.
It was not that long ago that we were experiencing these same feelings of uncertainty, with selling our home and belongings and moving overseas to a new country. One visual that helped me immensely when we were moving to Germany was the podcast (and now book) by Emily P. Freeman, about how to walk out of a room. To summarize her teaching on this topic, she describes that when we end one life chapter and start a new one, it is like walking into a new room. We fear when we walk through the door to a new room, we will fall right through the floor. Emily reminds us that there really is a floor–and we will land. And in that new room, there are people who have been waiting for us to enter and will be so happy we have arrived.
It warms my heart to think of all of the people we have met in this new room in Germany, who are such dear friends and will be deeply missed. But I am reminded that when we leave this room and enter the new room in the US, there are also people there that are waiting for us. Some people we know already and love dearly. Some who we are yet to meet. There are new places for me to discover in this new room. New experiences. New opportunities. New ways for me to share my gifts.
When I invest in a daily relationship with Jesus, I best have “ears to hear” on which way I should go or what I should do. God has amazing plans for me and for each of us. We just have to listen. May we have “ears to hear”. No man-made machine can ever take that ability away from me or you. For that, I am thankful.
There are many weeks of my life that I could not recount the key moments when looking back. However, the events of this recent week will be a permanent part of my story as I experienced mountain top highs and the deepest valleys. The highs and the lows, their juxtaposition running concurrently together, reminding me “this is life”. And where my gratitude for the light AND the dark places in my life rests, there my heart, life, and joy is.
I recall my mother saying many years ago when she was alive that she thought everyone should have to take an art appreciation class, as she had learned so much in that university 100-level art class. As for me, I have a hard time discerning all the meanings in works of painted art. But when my friend (a trained artist), shared with me that in the most enriching and vibrant life, the highs are going to be extra bright and the lows will be super low, I could definitely visualize that analogy, especially after the past week. A week that was a complete roller coaster from the highest of life’s highs to the lowest of life’s lows.
Yes, even I can recognize that a painting is flat and boring without the striking differences of color and the use of light…and shadows.
My friend and I were walking through the forest, walking the dogs, reflecting on the challenges and joys of the previous week. I was sharing with her the details on how I was asked by our daughter’s boyfriend (now fiancé), to help pull off a wedding proposal to our daughter. He wanted something private and scenic. How exciting and I was able to take part in the planning!
I had ideas, one of a beautiful hike to Burg Eltz, a 2-hour drive from here in Germany. But nothing really clicked on how to successfully pull that off until I bumped into my local German friend, who I knew would have local recommendations. And… she did. She recommended the Schlosshotel Kronberg, just a 15-minute drive from our house. The Schloss (castle) also happened to be on a golf course, which our daughter is passionate about, featuring a breathtaking view of the Schloss from one of the greens. I checked it out several times in advance, speaking with the people at the front desk, and worked in secret with our future son-in-law on how this could work.
This was my view of the Schlosshotel when I visited earlier in the week to check things out. Stunning, but grey. It would have to do though, rain or shine.
When the day came last week, we were so happy to see some little bits of sun outside. In Germany, we only see rain and clouds and more rain and clouds this time of year. But that day was different. After a beautiful lunch at a local French cafe together, I invited her to check out this local golf course with us, saying that a friend recommended that we see it. Everything went according to plan and as I casually said, walking up to the 14th tee box as the sprawling Schloss came into view, “I need to tie my shoe, you go ahead”…that was his cue to keep walking hand in hand to the spot where he wanted to propose. I stayed back and couldn’t hear a word, but when I saw him go on one knee and our daughter jumping up for joy and then, their kissing and embracing…I knew that this was one of the best moments to witness in life. It was absolutely perfect. Peaceful. Quiet. Colorful. Loving. And the skies were even blue, just for that moment.
The day of the proposal, just several days later from when I visited. Simply perfect.
The view from our Airbnb rooftop in Athens
Fast forward 48 hours and we then were together as a family on our way to Athens, for a weekend getaway while our daughter and future son-in-law were here in Europe for a few weeks. We arrived in time to check into our home for the weekend in the Athens City Center and celebrated the setting of the sun with a glass of wine on the Airbnb rooftop featuring a beautiful view of the Parthenon. The special evening was topped off with an incredible Greek dinner outside, with some of the best Baklava for dessert. What a way to begin our Athens experience!
And then, the next morning, I woke to the news that my dad had received his biopsy results that we were waiting for, but not the results we had hoped for. Aggressive prostate cancer. In that moment, everything else in the world slowed and faded into the distance, making my peripheral vision cloudy and muddy. All I could hear was my heart beating rapidly in my chest. This news quickly sucked me back almost 24 years earlier, when we had received the news of my mother’s inoperable glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor. Is this really happening, I wanted to wonder? But I knew it really was.
And then soon after, we were faced with the juxtaposition of a new day in Athens. The e-bike tour that we had planned and were so excited for. The cats upon cats that our younger daughter was so excited to see. And dad, and the rest of our family, thousands of miles away, and we were there helpless.
I knew that we had to go on our bike tour, even though we were grieving and pained at the same time.
I reminded myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other, take deep breaths, and pray.
On our tour, the tour guide led us up to Observatory Hill where we could see the Parthenon in the distance. She offered to take photos of each of us and knew exactly how to make these photos original. Right before we were going to leave, I felt the urge to ask her to take one photo of me. She asked me to jump up in the air like our daughter, and crazy enough, I tried. And thought, I failed. But what I didn’t realize is that in looking at the photos afterwards, she caught snapshots of me laughing. Joyful. Amidst the pain. Amidst the sadness. Joy can exist in the pain.
The highest of highs can exist with the lowest of lows.
After our weekend escape to Athens, we boarded the plane and as I buckled my seatbelt and put my headphones in, my mind began to race to my father and his diagnosis. What’s next? I could have easily been sucked down with grief. But I decided I should listen to the Ash Wednesday sermon podcast from the past week by our former pastor, Rev. Dr. Lorne Hlad, of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. And as soon as I heard his first opening sentences, I knew I needed to hear that sermon (you can see and hear his full sermon here).
In his message, Pastor Lorne talked about how we live in the tension of the uncertainty of this life and the certainty of death. He shared how we try to overcome and outrun these realities, however, we can’t.
He then asked, “What’s that like FOR YOU? …
In what ways have those two realities, the uncertainty of this life and the certainty of death, made themselves known to you in your life this year”?
Boom. I felt like a weight had just dropped on my chest. I knew God was talking to me through Pastor Lorne, thousands of miles away.
Through his sermon, he challenged us that perhaps the first step is just naming and facing those realities. “We are reminded, life is fragile, life is precious, life is fleeting”. It is easy for us to become ‘cynical or jaded’, but through Ash Wednesday we are reminded that ‘everything matters’. We are reminded of God’s faithful and overwhelming promises to us. ‘Every person, every breath, every relationship…matters.’ Then he suggested that perhaps our failure to recognize the value in all of those things, is what is behind our pain.
His words reminded me where my priorities lie and helped me process those mountain top highs and the darkest valley lows of the past week. His challenge was clear: for us to re-value precious moments, both the grand and the ordinary, people, and relationships. In doing so, we are to not be mournful about how we will all be dust someday, but to be encouraged and empowered, because everything matters. We can “re-claim our lives, ‘for where our treasure is, there our heart is’ (Matthew 6:21)”.
The next day during my daily prayer and devotion time, God led me to several devotional plans by the author, Kara Tippetts, who was a mother of four, wife, author, blogger, and died of cancer at the young age of 38. I had never read any of Kara’s works, but I was feeling called to read more of her wisdom, written down from her life years earlier. One of Kara’s quotes was “One of the things we’ve learned this crazy year is to enjoy the moments. The thing about suffering is it makes the sweet moments so much sweeter…The joy in the mundane feels so much more real when sadness has been walked through and tasted”. What a blessing she is still able to continue sharing her words of wisdom on living a life filled with joys and suffering.
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118:24
The highs. The lows. The light. The shadows. A life without the light and the shadows is lacking full definition and vibrancy. The more brilliance, the more shadows, just as in the most treasured of paintings.
With the brilliance and the shadows,
the greater is the total life experience.
Where can you experience more brilliance in your life? How close and present are the simultaneous shadows?
May we extend our gratitude for the brilliance and the shadows. All of these intertwined produce abundant living, an abundant life bursting with colors.
Here is to cherishing abundant living.
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”
There was something so different inside of me as we were set to land in Norway. Never before have I been in a country, other than the US, where my ancestors have lived for generations and generations. How could it be that I felt like I was coming home?
I felt something different in my heart and gut as our plane approached the land underneath us. Land that contained snow-capped mountains, steep cliffs, and water inlets spreading across and everywhere in between. This was not going to be like any other prior time landing somewhere on vacation. The sun itself was making a grand debut topping off this wondrous experience of seeing Norway for the first time in my life.
Never did I imagine how awestruck I would be to finally set foot in a country where my great-great-great….grandparents lived. I love to tell people that the left half of me is Norwegian and the right half is Swedish. I am proud to be of 100% Scandinavian descent, which is a bit more rare in the melting pot of the US. It is crazy when I meet people from Sweden or Norway here in Germany and realize…wow, I even look like them. And then, actually being in Norway, I was not prepared to actually feel like I was coming a bit home.
Growing up, we were always reminded of our Scandinavian ancestry when we travelled to visit our grandparents. Because we lived closer to my mother’s parents, about a 5 hour drive away, we were more ‘exposed’ to Swedish customs, such as food and holiday traditions because her great grandparents were all born in Sweden. In fact, they all were born in Sweden in the same area, but their children all subsequently met and married in Minnesota (the immigrant population definitely settled together). My dad’s mother lived much further away, a good 12 hour drive, so visiting her and our family there was more rare, but just as treasured. There we could eat Grandma’s Lefse as Grandma Harriet was Norwegian. It was from her that we learned the precious exclamation, “Uff da”. Handy for many of life’s circumstances.
Lefse, a Norwegian soft flat bread made out of potatoes. Yum!
I remember a framed family tree on our hallway wall when I was young that listed my Swedish ancestors on my mother’s side. I was so intrigued by who those people were as I walked past that tree daily. What were they like? What did they look like? What do I have in me today that ties to them? And what about my dad’s side, from Norway?
When I was little, I begged my grandmother (who was of Swedish descent) to teach me Swedish. This was way before Duolingo, but as a retired school teacher, she was thrilled to pull out her children’s Swedish school books. She taught me to count to 10 and how to say the cow was black. But we were not able to be there for any period long enough for me to pick up the language from her. How wondrous would it be to travel back in time and learn things that we now find more important, to have more of a connection between those generations that have come before us.
Hidden Parts of Me
Photos of several of my great -grandparents from Minnesota
Glimpses of the past
So about 3 years ago, I felt the urge to dive more into my roots and dig into my ancestry. What would I learn? What could I find? I have always enjoyed the show “Finding Your Roots” on PBS, so I wanted to see what I could learn for myself. I found many unexpected things (I will leave that one for a future blog…or maybe book), but the more and more that I searched through the records to connect to my ancestors, the more excited and dedicated I felt to put the pieces of our ancestry puzzle together. I knew names off the top of my head, but in most cases, they were faceless. I have not seen photos of many of them, my relatives from my Norwegian side, but I could tell you when they were born, where they were born and who were their neighbors. In some cases, you can even see what their handwriting looked like by looking at Draft cards from the wars.
Bryggen, the old wharf of Bergen, consists of old wooden buildings that have been rebuilt numerous times with traditional methods (due to fires). Bergen was an important part of the Hanseatic League’s trading empire from the 14th to the mid 16th century and is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
But landing in Norway…that put real places in my line of sight. I could see the mountains, the fjords, the houses that looked so much like those in Minnesota and Wisconsin. I was stunned by how much things looked like the Midwest of the US (aside from the mountains and sea). We landed in Bergen, Norway, which is located about a 12 hour drive south of Trondheim, where my Norwegian ancestors came from. In Bergen, we went on a fjord tour where we saw first hand how isolated the houses and small villages were because of the fjords and mountains. According to National Geographic, the coastline of Norway, one of the longest in the world, would circle the world two and a half times if stretched out. There are few roads connecting these villages- thus the dependance on the sea. I can just imagine how even more isolated the communities must be 12 hours to the north. Those were my ancestors. Leaving their tight-knit community for something different, “America Fever”. Was it out of desire for something better? Desperation? Adventure?
None of us had any input in how we came to be in this world.
But it all made each of us, us.
All I know is a series of events over thousands and thousands of years (and the grace of God) resulted in my DNA being created with my arrival on this earth. I would imagine that in those generations and generations before me, there were many stories of joy and love and many of heartbreak and pain. I am happy to be though in this space. In this time. In this place. And I am happy to learn any connections with those generations to help me better understand me. I am who am I because of the people who came before me.
When everything in life changes, it is tempting to run away. However, I have learned the importance of jumping right in and facing the uncomfortable.
There is no escaping adversity. The only way out is through.
Nathan Andres, Author of “Your REAL Life: Get Authentic, Be Resilient & Make It Count!”
“It really takes a year to feel comfortable here?”, a fellow parent from our daughter’s international school shockingly asked me recently on a group hike through the forest. Many of the women on our hike were new to Germany, moving here from other countries, some as recent as two weeks ago. “I have ten more months to go? Yikes”, she replied.
I responded to her saying that it took me about a year to feel like ‘I got this’ – ‘I can do this…and I can enjoy it’. Like I know how to do things finally. I can go to the post office and do everything in my limited German and leave without needing to hold back tears. I know how to find our favorite foods at the grocery store without referring to Google Translate on my phone. I can navigate to (almost) anywhere in Europe on a train (and survive cancellations and delays…saving that for a future blog). I shared with her that it is different for everyone, but people go through different transitions when they live abroad, from the ‘honeymoon’ period to periods of sadness and frustration. I have been told by school counselors that it is normal. It’s expected. It will get better. When I returned to Germany after being in the US this summer, I was surprised to be happy to be ‘back home’. That is when I felt like I had turned a corner.
In June 2023, we passed our one year anniversary of living in Germany, which started my reflection on our move transition. Thank you Facebook for the reminders of all that was going on a year ago; the stress, the excitement, the confusion, the unknown. How could I forget? I have continued to reflect over these past few months on how did I get to this new, more stable emotional state. I can boil it down to three words:
Embrace the Uncomfortable.
Moving internationally is definitely not for everyone. One has to be ok with change, with having not just a new home to live in, but every aspect of one’s life changing. When everything in life is changing, it can be easy to want to just stay indoors. Isolate. Just get through. But, I did what I knew best to do: find a routine that is healthy both emotionally, physically, and spiritually, surround myself with people, and follow my passions, even if that is not an easy thing to do. I needed to be ok with the uncomfortable and to be vulnerable.
I knew that in order for me to be part of my new community, which is a core value of mine, I needed to speak the language. But learning German is not easy – especially at my age. I have dedicated daily time for the last year (and more) to learning German in some fashion, from Duolingo and other apps, to in-person classes to listening to German music and podcasts. Even after all this investment though, my speaking of German is where I am most vulnerable and uncomfortable. It is where I have had to put myself out there and be ok to not be correct. To not be understood. To fail at finding the right words. However, it is through our failures, where we learn and grow the most.
This summer, I was invited to be the singer for an 8 week Christian course that was hosted in a nearby community. This was only possible because of the relationships that I had built with local Germans, all while leaning in and continuing to sit and function in my discomfort of not being fluent in German, but putting myself out there anyway. These wonderful people new to me valued my gift of singing…over my gift of speaking Deutsch.
As the course began, it was there that I had met a new challenge in German: conversation during a German dinner. I never struggle with small talk in English; I am a marathoner in terms of small talk. However, each week at this course, we shared a meal together before the lecture and music. Having limited German and lots of stories that you want to share with others, that is a very humbling experience.
Each week, I would begin to panic as I sat down to eat at the table with others. Panic from the silence of a German dinner conversation as opposed to a loud, engaging conversation among Americans that was all in English. Panic because all I remembered was “Wo wohnst du?” (where do you live?). Panic because when people started speaking to me in German, I would freeze and not know how to respond. I learned how to be ok with sitting in silence, listening, and humbly sharing “Ich verstehe nicht” (I don’t understand).
But I kept coming back each week. I had made a commitment to learning songs in German and sharing music with them. I made an internal commitment to myself that I would learn only by being there, being part of the conversation, and listening to the lecture. Picking out the words that I did not know. Sharing any words that I did.
My American Chili that I made for the community potluck, our last gathering where I was the singer. I toned down the spice for my German friends and it was all gone in a matter of minutes.
Because I continued to lean in and be ok with discomfort, over the past months, I have been invited to further musical opportunities and groups to share my gift of singing with others. We don’t always understand each other, but music speaks one language. Through music, we all are one.
Mein Deutsch ist immer noch nicht so toll (my German is still not great), but I feel like I have survived the roughest waters in crossing this raging river. I can feel the calmer waters surrounding my feet and see dry land on the other side. I am surrounded by a community of people from so many countries, Germany and around the world, that I am confident that in this second year, I can not just ‘make it’ or ‘survive’, but I can thrive.
Embracing the uncomfortable: My photo was the winner of our town’s marketing contest and the photo that I took was put on the town beer coasters this year. I even was able to meet the mayor during the official presentation. I shared how thankful I was to be part of this new community…in German.
Embracing Second Half Wonders 