Messy, Holy, and Held: Our First Week in Boston

A Week of Undoing, Becoming, and Generational Shift

It’s been a week since we arrived in Boston. A very long, emotional, exhausting week - one that has wrung me out in ways I didn’t expect. I’ve cried more times than I can count. Today was no exception. Having a medically complex child and moving five states away from home during the holiday season brings an extra layer of emotion I wasn’t prepared for.

There is a different kind of strength and refinement that happens when you’re pushed deeper into the fire. I don’t like it - if we’re being honest. My emotions are raw, my reserves are thin, and everything familiar feels far away. I miss my husband. I miss the comfort of home. I miss the little things you never think twice about - like being able to do your laundry without fighting a broken dryer and soaking-wet strangers' clothes sitting in the only working dryer for over eight hours.

Being a single parent to a medically complex, special-needs child in a city you don’t know - while trying to keep yourself upright - is downright hard. The city is loud. The smells of the building cling to my clothes. Logan has had several meltdowns a day. We started off strong today and I thought, maybe we’re on to something, but this disease is cruel: one step forward, seventeen steps back.

I hate everything about Functional Neurological Disorder and Amplified Pain Syndrome. I hate everything about the fact that one year ago my son was thriving, and today we are so far from anything but. I am angry at the broken medical system. I’m hurt by people whose words cut because they simply cannot comprehend what this life requires.

But God…

And yet… being here in a treatment facility where the medical providers and families truly understand has been something sacred - unlike anything we’ve experienced this past year. A mom can look at me and instantly see the hard without needing it explained. She can speak hope because she’s further along in the program. Those tiny glimpses of hope feel like oxygen when everything else has felt like pressure meant to break you. This kind of shared humanity - this feeling of being understood without having to defend or justify - is something we haven’t felt in a year.

But the weight of full-time caregiving - every detail, every decision, every meltdown, every ounce of hope - is heavy. Trying to find your own oxygen mask while tending to a child who depends on you for everything is a kind of stretching I didn’t know existed.

Don’t get me wrong - I knew it was going to be hard. But it’s a different kind of hard… a mixture of hope, fear, faith, and frustration. It’s the exhausting expectations over the weekend to keep progressing, mixed with the resistance and pushback you simply don’t have the strength for anymore. It’s the fight between curling up and crying… or searching for a perspective shift.

And then came the moment with our Christmas tree back home.

On Thursday the stand to our Christmas tree at home broke and the entire tree collapsed - shattering ornaments across the living room floor. One of the ornaments that broke was Savannah’s.

The ornament we always place last.
The ornament that symbolizes our daughter who passed away in 2017.
The ornament that carries her memory, year after year.

Addie broke down crying at home because she knew how much I loved that ornament. I didn’t even know it had happened until later, when Jax called. In his little voice, still piecing together the story of the big sister he never met but now knows lives in heaven with Jesus, he told me simply:

“Mom… the tree fell. And your favorite ornament broke.”

He expected me to fall apart.
He braced for it.

But I didn’t.
All I said was, “I’m just glad no one got hurt.”
And I meant it.

It was a surprising moment of clarity for me - my grief didn’t vanish, but it didn’t consume me either.

I could sense the confusion as he repeated that my favorite ornament broke, almost anticipating my reaction. For eight years, that ornament has been sacred. But something in me has shifted. Not because the grief is gone - it never will be - but because when life shakes you to the core, when one child is fighting for their life, the others are learning to navigate emotions they don’t even have words for yet, and you’re holding everything else together by a thread, your priorities reorder themselves.

Her ornament broke.
But my children were safe.
And that was enough.

The Generational Shift

My whole life, I’ve responded to setbacks with worst-case-scenario fear or the kind of entitlement that comes from growing up in dysfunction - expecting things to fall apart, bracing for disappointment, believing that struggle was inevitable. These were the dysfunctional patterns I inherited. Generational wounds teach you to expect the worst and call it preparation. It was ingrained in me long before I had the language to name it.

But when your child gets really sick, when your world is flipped upside down, when everything that once felt stable no longer is - your vision changes. Suddenly, not everything deserves the weight it once did. Suddenly, safety matters more than sentiment.

All I want is for my family to be okay. That’s it. That’s the whole prayer.

So how do you get to a place of being “okay” when the walls feel like they’re closing in and the ground might give way beneath you?

I don’t know.
Truly.

But I do know I walk in faith - mustard-seed faith. And even in my exhaustion, God has shown up again and again - unexpected fingerprints sprinkled across the week. Scriptures that showed up before we left suddenly resurfaced here: Psalm 91:4, the story of Elisha, Psalm 23. Whispers of reassurance reminding me I am not walking alone. Reminders that this is about more than medical treatment - this is about breaking generational strongholds and forming new wineskins.

My kids will never question if they are loved, heard, seen, or held. And someday, they will see God’s hand in this story - the refinement, the protection, the divine provision shaping the generations ahead.

Last night, Jax called me in tears. He was exhausted, but the heaviness beneath it was deeper. So we made space - space to breathe, to feel, to take Mr. Bear’s Journey to the Well, to lay down what he was carrying before God. Eight hours apart, a tool God helped me design a month ago became the bridge that helped him calm, regulate, and reconnect. By the end of the call, he was smiling. His tears had dried. His heart felt lighter. Grace entered the room again.

This week wasn’t just about Logan.
It was about all of us.
A week of refinement - painful and holy all at once.
A week of seeing the weight we’ve each been carrying.
A week of beginning, however imperfectly, the healing that has been waiting for us.

It was the moment on the canvas where God shifted the angle, and suddenly I could see His paintbrush at work.

Today, as I sat cutting out laminated ornaments from our church family to hang on our little Boston tree, a wave of emotions hit. My knee ached from all the miles walking the city to regulate my nervous system. My hand cramped from cutting. The hole punch broke. Logan was agitated. Small frustrations piling up until the tears spilled over.

But scattered in front of me were messages of hope meant to carry us through this storm. Words of grace. Prayers whispered on our behalf. Texts checking in. Friends offering space and prayer. Care packages on the way. A community reminding me I am loved, supported, and not alone.

Walking in the cold this week, I felt gratitude for the ability to just move. Reading through prayers and encouragement, I felt gratitude for the people holding us up. And as I looked at all those ornaments - each message of love laminated and waiting to be hung - I felt gratitude that we made it through our first week in Boston.

Maybe it was messy.
Maybe it was heavy.
Maybe it stretched every part of me.

But we made it....