Howdy...

An introduction

Howdy, I’m Jessica, and I’m glad you’re here.

A little over 6 years ago, I had a disagreement with a horse. Unfortunately for me, the horse won that disagreement and I won a trip in a helicopter to my nearest hospital. A week later, I walked out of the hospital but with a brain injury that would define the next several years of my life.

So why am I here?

I’ve always been a writer. The first time I was published was when I was in high school and I got a summer job at the local newspaper. My path in college and into my career was also defined by writing, finding myself in a high end public relations firm writing press releases and video scripts for clients in the agriculture industry, and then again back in my home town as I started my own PR business, using my writing skills to help local businesses, as well as my larger clients.

It wasn’t until doing a high dive off a horse that I found myself needing writing as a way to cope with the massive trauma that had invaded my life. Somewhere along the way, with nudges from some well-placed family and friends, I realized that maybe some of the lessons I had learned might be of help for someone who finds themselves in the same position.

I spent much of the first years of recovering from my accident being angry. I was angry I was in pain all the time, I was angry I wasn’t healing like I was supposed to, I was angry that all the things I used to love just weren’t where I found happiness anymore. I was possibly most angry at God. I fully understood that sometimes God let bad things happen so that he could use them for His glory. I was totally ok with that. However, I couldn’t understand why He continued letting me live in pain when I cried out for healing. Did I not pray with enough faith? Did I not quote the right scriptures, say the right words, go to enough alter calls?

If this sounds like you, I have a hard truth for you: the Lord has something greater planned for you – but healing on this earth may not be part of it.

So this is my purpose here. I am setting out on a mission to share the beautiful, wonderful, sometimes really hard truths that God has showed me along the way for those like me: those who live in chronic pain, or chronic illness, or disability, or with cancer, or with mental health conditions, or with infertility. Those of us who, like Paul, live with thorns in our sides.

I hope you follow along with me, reach out to me with your own stories of your thorns, and most of all, I hope this brings you encouragement and strength right where you are.